the least
objectionable. The reader is made to think that the gold lies so near
the surface that he will be required to take very little trouble in
digging for it. And the writer is enabled,--at any rate for a time,
and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,--to
throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and
prolixity, of description. This rushing "in medias res" has doubtless
the charm of ease. "Certainly, when I threw her from the garret
window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she
would fall so far without injury to life or limb." When a story
has been begun after this fashion, without any prelude, without
description of the garret or of the pavement, or of the lady thrown,
or of the speaker, a great amount of trouble seems to have been
saved. The mind of the reader fills up the blanks,--if erroneously,
still satisfactorily. He knows, at least, that the heroine has
encountered a terrible danger, and has escaped from it with almost
incredible good fortune; that the demon of the piece is a bold demon,
not ashamed to speak of his own iniquity, and that the heroine
and the demon are so far united that they have been in a garret
together. But there is the drawback on the system,--that it is almost
impossible to avoid the necessity of doing, sooner or later, that
which would naturally be done at first. It answers, perhaps, for
half-a-dozen chapters;--and to carry the reader pleasantly for
half-a-dozen chapters is a great matter!--but after that a certain
nebulous darkness gradually seems to envelope the characters and
the incidents. "Is all this going on in the country, or is it in
town,--or perhaps in the Colonies? How old was she? Was she tall? Is
she fair? Is she heroine-like in her form and gait? And, after all,
how high was the garret window?" I have always found that the details
would insist on being told at last, and that by rushing "in medias
res" I was simply presenting the cart before the horse. But as
readers like the cart the best, I will do it once again,--trying it
only for a branch of my story,--and will endeavour to let as little
as possible of the horse be seen afterwards.

"And so poor Frank has been turned out of heaven?" said Lady Mabel
Grex to young Lord Silverbridge.

"Who told you that? I have said nothing about it to anybody."

"Of course he told me himself," said the young beauty. I am aware
that, in the word beauty, and perhaps, also, in