A lady, an intimate friend of the late Alphonse Karr, was one day on a visit to the famous French author, and noticing in his library the statuettes of the Venus of Milo and a few other classical beauties, she said to him: 'I am afraid you are wrong to feast your eyes on those exquisite faces and perfect forms, because they very seldom exist in real life, and they can only make you feel disappointed and spoil your mind. When you go to a ballroom, I imagine that there are few women, if any, that you are not inclined to criticise.'

For the same reason I will answer a lady correspondent, who asks me whether she should encourage or even allow her daughters to read novels: No, young people should not read novels. Instead of infusing into their minds sensible ideas about the stern realities of life, they portray disinterestedness that is overdone, beauty that is rarely seen outside of museums, devotion that has been very uncommon since the days of the Crusaders, love that has been unheard of since the death of Orpheus and Eurydice, pluck that died with Bayard and Bertrand du Guesclin; and I am not sure that, loathsome as they are to me, I would not recommend the novels of the realistic school rather than those of the romantic school to young people of both sexes; for if the former make you feel fairly disgusted with humanity, they do not, like the latter, fill the minds of youth with illusions that are destined to be blown to the four winds of the earth by the realities of life. In fact, I know some novels which young people might read, and also some which they ought to read; but I believe I could count them all on the fingers of my two hands. Let young people study life from life, listen to the experience of those who have lived, frequent people who have found happiness and met with success in life. This will much better make them serve their apprenticeship.

Yes, I say, avoid reading all novels, and, above all, the sentimental ones—those that make young girls believe that husbands are lovers who spend their lives at the feet of their wives making love to them, and young men imagine that wives are sweethearts who have nothing to do but coo and try to look pretty. Let young people read books that will help make them sensible and cheerful, books of travels and adventures, books of pleasant philosophy, of common-sense and humour. Boyhood, girlhood, as well as young manhood and womanhood, should be spent in cheerful surroundings, for nothing leads better to morality than cheerfulness. If I had a house full of young people, I would have my house ring all day long with the peals of laughter of my boys and girls. Fun of the good, wholesome sort, humour and gaiety, should be the daily food of youth, and only books that supply it should be given to them.

On the whole, there is not much to choose between the novels of the realistic school, that would make you believe that the world is full of murderers, forgers, men and women with diseased minds, novels that reek of disinfectants, and make you feel as you do when you come out of a hospital and your clothes are permeated with a smell of carbolic acid, and the novels of the sentimental school, that would lead you to believe that all the male and female geese who are their heroes and heroines have the slightest chance of being successful in life.

People should already know a great deal of real life before they get acquainted with the way in which it is represented in novels.