significance as it proceeds. The
pattern of the web is soon disclosed after the various threads have been
arranged upon the loom; and yet the reader is occasionally surprised,
now by the appearance on the stage of a clever Americanized German, now
by the unexpected introduction of threatening complications, and even of
important political events. Though confined within a seemingly narrow
circle, every incident, and especially the Polish struggle, is depicted
grandly and to the life. In all this the author proves himself to be a
perfect artist and a true poet, not only in the treatment of separate
events, but in the far more rare and higher art of leading his
conception to a satisfactory development and _denouement_. As this
requirement does not seem to be generally apprehended either by the
writers or the critics of our modern novels, I shall take the liberty of
somewhat more earnestly attempting its vindication.

The romance of modern times, if at all deserving of the name it inherits
from its predecessors in the _romantic_ Middle Ages, represents the
latest _stadium_ of the epic.

Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in
other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent
with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the
general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero.
If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall
find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two
generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance,
let it moralize ever so loudly, is still immoral; let it offer ever so
much of so-called wisdom, is still irrational. The excellence of a
romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and
truthful exhibition of the course of human things.

_Candide_, which may appear to be an exception, owes its prolonged
existence to the charm of style and language; and, after all, how much
less it is now read than _Robinson Crusoe_, the work of the talented De
Foe; or than the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that simple narrative by
Voltaire's English contemporary. Whether or not the cause can be clearly
defined is here of little consequence; but an unskillfully developed
romance is like a musical composition that concludes with discord
unresolved--without perhaps inquiring wherefore, it leaves an unpleasant
impression on the mind.

If we carry our invest