Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained.

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."-- Pp.

120-1.] [Footnote 147: Mr.Arthur Helps, in one of his thoughtful books, published in 1845, made some observations on this point, which are not less applicable now.
He there said: "it is a grievous thing to see literature made a vehicle for encouraging the enmity of class to class.

Yet this, unhappily, is not unfrequent now.

Some great man summed up the nature of French novels by calling them the Literature of Despair; the kind of writing that I deprecate may be called the Literature of Envy....