provided they are punished at the end of the book, or are crushed beneath the weight of the author's anger and disgust. As for the honest folks, say the critics, they ought to be awarded at least a few occasional lines of praise and encouragement. Thus our impassibility, our tranquil demeanour as analysts has been deemed most culpable. Fools have even dared to say that we lied when we became most scrupulously true. What! always rascals and rascals, it has been repeated, never what is called a sympathetic character! There must be sympathetic characters, we are told, even if one do violence to nature in order to create them Not only, too, is it our duty to prefer virtue, but we must embellish it. We have even been informed that we ought to point out a character's good qualities and leave his or her bad ones unmentioned. When all is said, our only crime has been our refusal to depart from our strict fidelity to nature. There is no more absolute honesty and virtue in the world than there is perfect health. There is a touch of human animalism as there is a touch of disease even in the finest natures, and in average natures there is more than a mere touch. Those wondrously pure maidens, those most loyal, brave, devoted young men who figure in certain novels do not belong to earth. In order to give them a semblance of real life, one would have to say many things about them which their authors leave unmentioned. We Naturalists have made it our principle to say everything; we do not pick and choose, we do not idealise; and it is because we decline to do so that we have been accused of revelling in filth. As a matter of fact, the question of morality in the novel lies in these two opinions: the Idealists assert that to be moral one must lie; the Naturalists retort that one cannot be moral by departing from the truth. Nothing is so dangerous as the romantic. Certain works, by painting the world in false colours, unhinge the mind and urge it to the most hazardous and pernicious courses. And I speak not of the hypocrisy of much of that which is called propriety, nor of the abominations which are rendered alluring by the flowers that many writers heap upon them. We, the Naturalists, adorn no vileness, we teach the bitter science of life, we offer the world the

high lesson of reality and truth. I know no school that has ever shown more morality, more austerity. Certainly we write not for babes and sucklings, but for the world at large, that world which is full of sin, vice, crime, deceit, and hypocrisy. While we extenuate nothing, we set down nought in malice. We simply paint humanity as we find it, as it is.

in order that all may be healed.

We say let all be made known

And there our duty ends. It is

for the leaders and guardians of the nations to do theirs.

Emile Zola

THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY

OF

FAMOUS LITERATURE.

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, English metaphysician and poet, was born October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary; graduated at Jesus College, Cambridge, 1792. With Southey and others he formed a scheme of communism in foreign parts, to be called "Pantisocracy"; but remained in England for a literary life. After various wanderings and visits to other parts of Europe, in 1810 he settled permanently in London. His first volume of poems was in 1794; the "Ancient Mariner" formed part of the volume "Lyrical Ballads," chiefly Wordsworth's, in 1798; "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" are the chief of the others. He edited The Friend in 1809. "Biographia Literaria," "Lay Sermons," "Aids to Reflection," and the posthumously collected "Table Talk" are his main prose works. He died July 25, 1834.]

PART THE FIRST.

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three:

"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding feast, and detaineth one.

The guests are met, the feast is set:

Mayst hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.

"Hold off! unhand me, gray beard loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye-
The Wedding Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.

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The Wedding Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.