hailed it. After
all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense amusement of the whole
cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate, for the fond fabulist, when
judicious not less than fond, as his best of determinants. That charming
principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a
principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy,
appeased with no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and
rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty - even as ogres, with their
Fee-faw-fum! rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.
    Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so speedy,
definition of my gentleman's job - his coming out, all solemnly appointed and
deputed, to save Chad, and his then finding the young man so disobligingly and,
at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a new issue altogether, in the
connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be dealt with in a new light -
promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the higher branches of the
compositional art as one could possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from
book to book, I proceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to
this verification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the
better, of the scheme of consistency gone in for. As always - since the charm
never fails - the retracing of the process from point to point brings back the
old illusion. The old intentions bloom again and flower - in spite of all the
blossoms they were to have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of
adventure transposed - the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs
of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably objective,
becoming the question at issue and keeping the author's heart in his mouth. Such
an element, for instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her
finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than
circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be
reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first
hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it's
unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the
comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished intention too
inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about