vincial
and disreputable metropolitan notoriety, and especially in touching
on the ghastly catastrophe of her fate, he was faithfully recording
facts--thus, however repulsively, yet conscientiously "pointing a
moral," if not "adorning a tale"; but if Hester be the daughter of
Lewes's imagination, and if her experience and her doom be inventions
of his fancy, I wish him better, and higher, and truer taste next
time he writes a novel.

'Julius's exploit with the side of bacon is not defensible; he might
certainly, for the fee of a shilling or sixpence, have got a boy to
carry it for him.

'Captain Heath, too, must have cut a deplorable figure behind the
post-chaise.

'Mrs. Vyner strikes one as a portrait from the life; and it equally
strikes one that the artist hated his original model with a personal
hatred. She is made so bad that one cannot in the least degree
sympathise with any of those who love her; one can only despise them.
She is a fiend, and therefore not like Mr. Thackeray's Rebecca, where
neither vanity, heartlessness, nor falsehood have been spared by the
vigorous and skilful hand which portrays them, but where the human
being has been preserved nevertheless, and where, consequently, the
lesson given is infinitely more impressive. We can learn little from
the strange fantasies of demons--we are not of their kind; but the
vices of the deceitful, selfish man or woman humble and warn us. In
your remarks on the good girls I concur to the letter; and I must add
that I think Blanche, amiable as she is represented, could never have
loved her husband after she had discovered that he was utterly
despicable. Love is stronger than Cruelty, stronger than Death, but
perishes under Meanness; Pity may take its place, but Pity is not
Love.

'So far, then, I not only agree with you, but I marvel at the nice
perception with which you have discriminated, and at the accuracy
with which you have marked each coarse, cold, improbable, unseemly
defect. But now I am going to take another side: I am going to
differ from you, and it is about Cecil Chamberlayne.

'You say that no man who had intellect enough to paint a picture, or
write a comic opera, could act as he did; you say that men of genius
and talent may have egregious faults, but they cannot descend to
brutality or m