mine are fresh each time I read the page,—that the one possible solution of the problem has been reached; that only thus could the widely contrasting natures of brother and sister meet in unison, and the hard-fought battle be gained. Such an end is not sad, it is happy and beautiful; and, moreover, it is in a measure inevitable, the climax being shadowed from the beginning, as in the tragedy of the Greeks, and the whole tale moving swiftly and surely to its appointed close. If we compare a finely chiseled piece of work like this with the flat, faintly colored sketches which are at present passing muster for novels, we feel that beauty of form is something not compounded of earthly materials only, and that neither the savage strength of French and Russian realism, nor the dreary monotony of German speculative fiction, can lift us any nearer the tranquil realms of art.
Nor can we even claim that we have gained in cheerfulness what we have lost in symmetry, for the latest device of the pessimistic story-writer is to marry his pair of lovers, and then coldly inform us that, owing to the inevitable evils of life, they were not particularly
