by Charles James Lever (Author)

Let no enthusiast of the pastoral or romantic school, no fair reader with eyes "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue," sneer at the title of my paper. I have written it after much and mature meditation. It would be absurd to deny that the great and material changes which our progress in civilization and the arts effect, should not impress literature as well as manners; that the tone of our thoughts, as much as the temper of our actions, should not sympathize with the giant strides of inventive genius. We have but to look abroad, and confess the fact.