• This article is written in response to the Archbishop's sermon, which was excerpted in The Times, Nov 2, 1864.
• The argument is not so much for sensation novels as it is against the Archbishop's condemnation, which rests on pretty shaky grounds.
• "Nobody pretends that a story of complicated incident and entangled plot is a very lofty work of art. To invent a secret which may interest the reader, and to keep it so cleverly that his interest shall carry him through three volumes to discover it, does not, perhaps, demand the best qualities of the profoundest genius. If it were possible to secure an adequate supply of novels of character, or stories in which there should be no crime, it might possible be a better thing for the purity and elevation of public taste. But. . ." (559)
• "It is a relief to find that, though the Archbishop's conclusion may possibly be sound, his reasons for it are most uncommonly hollow. . . In the first place, it teaches people not to trust in appearances, but to believe that behind there lies a world of crime and misery; and, in the second, it inculcates fatalism. How far are sensation novels fairly open to these two charges?" (559)
• "The sensation novels are much too complicated and ingenious for ill-regulated young men to be able to weave similar nets for themselves out of the rude materials of common life." (559)
• "We know that bishops do sometimes condemn books of which they only know the names." (559)

Pamela E. Bedore