The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-19 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 1863.

The power of the Press is a recognised fact in this
nineteenth century. Captain PEN holds at the
present moment a more unlimited and a more omni-
potent sovereignty than any royal monarch of
ancient or modern days. Apart from the political
influence of the Public Journals so conspicuous in
this country—" a country," as the late Lord
STRANGFORD happily called it, " which is governed
by its journals, though the names of its journalists
are unknown"—apart from the political power
wielded by the journalist, how great is the influence
continuously, perhaps unconsciously, but not the
less powerfully, exercised over the tone and morals
of society by the Literature of the day ! How
many abuses have been tolerated until the finger of
Genius pointed them out to universal scorn ! How
many gigantic hypocrisies have crumbled away at
a single touch from the same master hand ! It was
not a figurative thrashing that NICHOLASNICKLEBY
administered to the Yorkshire Schoolmaster, After
the revelation of the iniquities of Dotheboys Hall,
the days of that despotic Pedagogue were num-
bered. According to the definition of the School-
master himself, " the coat of arms of the SQuEERsEs
was torn, and their sun bad gone down in the ocean
wave." We might particularise many kindred
instances—the plaintive appeal of little OLIVER
"asking for more," the portentous incapability of
Mr. BUMBLE, the east wind raised by JARNDYCE
and JARND7CE, which blew so cuttingly through
the purlieus of the Court of Chancery—but the
enumeration is unnecessary. The many social reforms
which have been suggested by the most popular of
our novelists are recognised by all. Others, in like
manner, have done the State good service by their
fictitious representations of its real grievances, by
their imaginary exhibition of its actual cffences.
And it is only right that so it should be. High in-
tellectual gifts entail upon their possessor a weighty
responsibility. It is a lesson impressed upon every
manly nature, from boyhood upwards, that the pos-
session of physical strength entails upon its owner
the exercise of great restraint and forbearance. He
is rightly dubbed "coward' who dares to assail any
one inferior in size or power to himself. The na-
tural chivalry of human nature has raised up this
potent barrier of defence, to protect the weak and
the helpless from the physical power of the strong.
How much more is this law required in the moral
than in the material world ? How far more
cowardly and despicable is his conduct who, gifted
with intellect and genius above his fellows, employs
those potent weapons to injure the unwary—whose
eloquent tongue allures to destruction all who in
their blindness listen to the voice of the charmer
—whose craven hand deals the dastardly blow
which destroys not the body but the soul.
Happily it is far otherwise with the majority of
the authors and authoresses of our day : some pain-
ful exceptions there are ; but the most gifted and
the most popular are exerting their talents for the
noble purpose of social regeneration. On this
theme the writer of a recent romance, which has
been the subject of much admiration and of much
censure, has addressed a long letter to a contem-
porary. Mrs. NORTON, in alluding to some com-
ments upon her new novel, " Lost and Saved/ de-
clares that her object in its publication has been not
only to point a moral, but to arouse the attention and
startle the conscience of society. If she has laid
bare secret offences, it is with a view to effect their
remedy. When reminded that a single hand can
do nothing against au universal evil, the authoress
dauntlessly repliee,4 So far from individual pro-
tests being worthless, they are the small hinges on
which the great doors of change for ever turn ;"
and iu this bold assertion she is certainly justified
by the experience of the past, as among many others
the examples we have alluded to above may testify.
It is assuredly Me mission of the novelist, while
depicting hum an nature as it is, to exhibit in the

strongest light that Imagination can suggest or
Eic quence enforce, the errors and the faults and the
follies ishich constitute the vast difference between
what is and what ought to be. In so doing the
fiction-writer is only following the teaching of that
best of models for every artist—Truth. The Lesson
of Life that might be summed up by every death-
bed is the same, and compared with such a revela-
tion, the romances of the most imaginative would be
tame and commonplace. The man (or the woman)
of genius could not possibly have a higher ambition
than that laid claim to by Mrs. NORTON—we say
advisedly laid claim to, because we do not think
that her work has justified her intentions.

" To put a tongue in every wound,
And raise the very stones to mutiny,"
indeed, a task worthy of the highest intellect