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362 SKETCHES.
them; my soul has transmigrated through their Sophias,
Julias, Rosas, Amandas, Alices, Elizas, until I was on the
point of losing myself, when, in a fright, I vowed a deadly
hatred of all novels; wished their eternal thema, Love, at
Jericho, and determined to live for reality, and to cultivate
friendship and potatoes.
About this time I began myself to write; not novels,
oh dear, no; but lo! before I knew a word about it, it
turned out to be a novel after all, or something very like it.
Gracious Heaven! had I not then suffered enough from
the poisonous stuff? And was I now going to poison
others with it? And yet I wished to do something quite
different. Have I not known young ladies, who, through
romantic whims, had mistaken the aim of their life, failed
to become real human beings, because they had failed to
become happy heroines of romance; who for the love and
moonlight of the novel had forgotten life’s real light ; sigh-
ing for grand dramatic effects, until they had forgotten the
significance of their own part in the great drama of life?
Have I not known young men, who, enamored and daz-
zled by romantic scenes, had forgotten to be honest men,
and who, when they came out of the world of illusions into
the world of reality, saw therein nothing but prose, and
want, and “reality’s barren rocks,” on which no beauty and
no happiness could grow. Have I not at one time been so
“novel possessed,” that every time I went to church I ex-
pected to be carried off on the road? No, no; by no
means — no more novels ; away with them all!
So I exclaimed, but at that moment I saw marching up
before me silently the whole host of novels in formidable
array. From England they came, from France, from Den-
mark, from North America, aye, also from China (whose
long novel, “The Two Brides, Miss Zi and Miss Lo,” one
cannot praise without being one’s self a Chinese, or Mr.
Abel Rémusat*). And I saw this host rising out of the
1 The name of the translator.
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