this she
as often as not marries the wrong person to begin with, and she suffers
terribly from the plots and intrigues of the vicious baronet; but even
death has a soft place in his heart for such a paragon, and remedies all
mistakes for her just at the right moment. The vicious baronet is sure
to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed
requesting his wife, as a particular favor to him, to marry the man she
loves best, and having already dispatched a note to the lover informing
him of the comfortable arrangement. Before matters arrive at this
desirable issue our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and
gifted heroine pass through many _mauvais moments_, but we have the
satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into embroidered
pocket-handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclines on the very best
upholstery, and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo, from being
dashed out of her carriage to having her head shaved in a fever, she
comes out of them all with a complexion more blooming and locks more
redundant than ever.

We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved from a serious
scruple by discovering that silly novels by lady novelists rarely
introduce us into any other than very lofty and fashionable society. We
had imagined that destitute women turned novelists, as they turned
governesses, because they had no other "ladylike" means of getting their
bread. On this supposition, vacillating syntax, and improbable incident
had a certain pathos for us, like the extremely supererogatory
pincushions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a
blind man. We felt the commodity to be a nuisance, but we were glad to
think that the money went to relieve the necessitous, and we pictured to
ourselves lonely women struggling for a maintenance, or wives and
daughters devoting themselves to the production of "copy" out of pure
heroism--perhaps to pay their husband's debts or to purchase luxuries for
a sick father. Under these impressions we shrank from criticising a
lady's novel: her English might be faulty, but we said to ourselves her
motives are irreproachable; her imagination may be uninventive, but her
patience is untiring. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and
twaddle was consecrated by tears. But no! This theory of ours, like
many other pretty theories, has had to give way before observation.
Women's silly novels, we are now convinced, are