There was, indeed, at that time a disposition among the most respectable people to condemn novels generally; nor was this disposition by any means without excuse; for works of that sort were then almost always silly, and very frequently wicked.

The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare.

Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle.

Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough, perhaps, to render them ridiculous; but the author before us really seems anxious to court this literary martyrdom by a device still more infallible,we mean that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or impassioned conceptions, with objects and incidents which the greater part of his readers will probably persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting.

He is at least a male Horace Walpole; as superior to the "silken Baron," as Fonthill, with its York-like tower embosomed among hoary forests, was to that silly band-box which may still be admired on the road to Twickenham ...

The father, a good-natured, silly valetudinary, abandons the management of his household to Emma, he himself being only occupied by his summer and winter walk, his apothecary, his gruel, and his whist table.

We are informed that she had been eminently successful in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Weston; and when the novel commences she is exerting her influence in favour of Miss Harriet Smith, a boarding-school girl without family or fortune, very good humoured, very pretty, very silly, and, what suited Miss Woodhouse's purpose best of all, very much disposed to be married.

Sir Walter Elliot, a silly and conceited baronet, has three daughters, the eldest two, unmarried, and the third, Mary, the wife of a neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Charles Musgrove, heir to a considerable fortune, and living in a genteel cottage in the neighbourhood of the Great house which he is hereafter to inherit.

He got knocked silly with the blast of the shell that sunk the "Swan."

"YOU SILLY IDIOT!

I'm afraid this Leonora is going to spend most of her time with her aunta silly old thing, whatever her many virtues may be.

From time to time we got a bit of news; something that Cupido fished out of the newspapers and spread all over town, or something that that silly doña Pepa would let drop, while telling inquisitive people about the glories her niece was winning abroad; anyhow, all a heap of lies that were invented I don't know where or by whom.

The culture must be transmuted into life-power, and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life.

She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the mind-and-millinery, the oracular, the white-neck-cloth, and the modern-antique varieties.

"In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness.

And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute;"a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of "silly novels by lady novelists.

" Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of the silly ones is severe.

It is interesting to note that in the first of these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels.

Weak and silly novels are the result of an effort to break away from this rule; but the writer who ventures to disregard it never can be other than silly or weak.

She says the silly novelists rarely make us acquainted with "any other than very lofty and fashionable society," and very often the authors know nothing of such society except from the reading of other such novels.

That the common phases of religious life are capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in this kind of portraiture.

"I presume they doctor her that silly fashion, with little pills the size of a small pin head.

I heard a rumble in his throat that sounded like "silly blighters.

We were, all three of us, gay and silly, as one very often suddenly is, in Russia, in the middle of even disastrous situations.

The fortunes and adventures of the soul on its journey towards its own country, its hopes and fears, struggles and despairs, its rejections and joy and rewardsits death and destructionall this in terms of human life and the silly blundering conditions of this splendid glorious earth....

The first was a Kentuckian, who was dressed in a suit of grey home-spun cloth, and wore on his head a fantastical cap, formed of a racoon-skin, beautifully striped, the ears projecting just above his forehead on each side, while the forefeet of the animal, decorated with red cloth, formed the ear-laps, and the tail depended over his back like a quieu, producing a ludicrous effect.

This ludicrous circumstance led to the confusion I had noticed when I arrived; the man had gone they knew not whither, and had it been possible to overtake him, I question whether he would have been pursued, the cleverness of the trick being highly applauded by the company, and the landlord feeling, perhaps, ashamed of being outwitted a second time, after himself giving the challenge.

The appearance presented by the victim, in this peculiarly American dress, was ludicrous in the extreme, and looked very comfortable.

His swelling stile, it must be owned, was better suited to a subject of this gravity and importance, than to that of a light and ludicrous nature: the exordium of this piece is poetical, and has an allusion to that of Spencer's Fairy Queen: From low and abject themes the grov'ling muse Now mounts aërial to sing of arms Triumphant, and emblaze the martial acts Of Britain's hero.

And I have heard allusions to a ludicrous difficulty which occurred when some princesses (of the Royal Family) dined in the Hall, and it was a great puzzle how to get them to the right side of the benches.

Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous.

The actual Hilda, living far within the mysterious fastness of her own being, was too solitary, too preoccupied, and too fatigued, to be touched even by the noble beauty that distinguished the expiatory and protective gesture of the spinster, otherwise somewhat ludicrous, as she leaned across the bed and cut off the sunshine.

He was greatly in earnest; he knew he was right; but he could still see the comical side of things; he still had a sense of the ludicrous; and in that lay his salvation.

For a sense of the ludicrous is the best of mental antiseptics; it, if anything, will keep our perishable human nature sweet, and save it from the madhouse.

The poorest persons have a bit of pageant going towards the tomb; memorial stones are set up over the least memorable; and, in order to preserve some show of respect for what remains of our old loves and friendships, we must accompany it with much grimly ludicrous ceremonial, and the hired undertaker parades before the door.

Both looked so harassed and tired, that, although Jerry and I could not help laughing at their ludicrous situation, we nevertheless pitied them.

Sundry "nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles," and sundry eloquent glances of his bright black eyes, were covertly bestowed upon his fair cousin; anon, with ludicrous solemnity, he felt the pulse of Perez, shook his head, and, in short, imitated with inimitable exactness all the technical airs and graces of a regular graduate of Salamanca."Cousin," cried he at length, with a sly look at Juana, "I pity your plightfrom my soul

His long continued avoidance of the experiment boxes and his still more persistent hesitancy in entering them, coupled with his almost ludicrous efforts to see beneath the floor through the holes cut for the staples on the doors, gave me the impression of superstitious fear of the unseen.

As Sampson delivered himself of this ludicrous remark, Harry burst into a loud fit of laughter, and handing the tar his glass, he sang out "Sankoty light, ahoy!" which brought all hands on deck in an instant, rubbing open their eyes, (for it was

and her wild laugh was heard reechoing from hall to hall, Natalie smiling at her ludicrous comparison.

At this piece of information, delivered in such a calm, pleasant manner, the smiles which had been visible on the faces of those who listened, grew into a hearty laugh, in which the chagrined Montague joined, as being the safest way of retreat, and although piqued by the ludicrous position in which he had been placed, he could not but look with admiration upon the gentle creature, whose pleasant repartee had been in self-defence.

It was with difficulty that those who witnessed the fellow's ludicrous movements, could refrain from a smile; but when, at a summons from Natalie, the door opened, and

The black stallion was handicapped many yards at the start before Dan could swing him around after the roan darted past with poor Morgan in ludicrous pursuit.

Their position had a ludicrous resemblance to the posture of dancers, but their bodies were trembling with effort.

Trotter was the local Baptist minister, and Dot remarked to herself that her father was able to pronounce his name without the smallest suspicion that such a name, as belonging to a minister of divine mysteries, was rather ludicrous, though indeed Baptist ministers seemed always to have names like that!"and he asked me when some of my young ladies were going to join the church.

Macaulay has ridiculed Johnson for what he takes to be the ludicrous inconsistency of his intense political prejudice, combined with his assertion of the indifference of all forms of government.

Then a wild burst of grief from the prisoner's wife, to which his two children, not understanding it all, but vaguely conscious of some calamity, added their voices in two long, discordant wails, which would have been ludicrous had they not been heartrending.

All ideas of right and wrong are confounded in these words: emancipate property, emancipate a horse, or an ox, would not only be unmeaning, but a ludicrous expression.

For although at first there was something a little ludicrous in the plight of the well-to-do, brought down with a crash to the level of the masses and loaded with paper money which was as worthless as Turkish bonds, so that the millionaire was for the time being no richer than the beggar, pity stirred in one at the sight of real suffering and anguish of mind.

" Other bodies of Belgian soldiers wore ludicrous little képis with immense eye-shades, mostly broken or hanging limp in a dejected way.