The following is taken from the "New Empire"- Will novel-writing be left to the "simple-minded" in the future? Is the art of Dickens, Thackeray, Meredith, Henry James, Howells and Conrad "played out"? Have our current novels degenerated into "little more than mere tracts"? Such charges against the art of fiction as it is practised to-day have been made in a British paper by Miss Cecily Hamilton, who has figured more as a playwright than a novelist. It is not to be expected that the practitioners of the art will accept their dismissals from the field of effective industries, with such easy gestures as Miss Hamilton seems to wield. Her article has not come to our hand, but the replies printed in the "Westminster Gazette" (London) by two novelists, Miss May Sinclair and Miss Rose Mccaulay, together with some philosophic words by the eminent critic, Professor George Saintsbury, indicate the gist of her argument.
