And yet, do you know, Robert says that you might peradventure, by the
dedication of your book to me, mean a covert lecture, or sarcasm, who
knows? Even if you did, the kindness of the personal address would make
up for it. Who wouldn't bear both lecture and sarcasm from anyone who
begins by speaking _so_? Therefore I am honoured and pleased and
grateful all the same--yes, and _will_ be.

But, dear Mr. Chorley, you don't silence me, notwithstanding. The spell
of your dedication hasn't fastened me up in an oak for ever. Your book
is very clever; your characters very incisively given; princess and
patriots admirably cut out (and up!); half truths everywhere, to which
one says 'How true!' But one might as well (and better) say 'How false!'
seeing that, dear Mr. Chorley, it does really take two halves to make a
whole, and we know it. The whole truth is not here--not even suggested
here--and let me add that the half truth on this occasion is cruel.

One thing is ignored in the book. Under all the ridiculousness, under
all the wickedness even of such men and women, lies _a cause_, a right
inherent, a wrong committed. The cant presupposes a doctrine, and the
pretension a real heroism. Your best people (in your book) seem to have
no notion of this. Your heroine deserves to be a victim, not because she
was rash and ignorant, but because she was selfish and foolish. The
world wasn't lost for her because she loved--either a cause or a
man--but because she wanted change and excitement. If she had felt on
the abstract question as I have known women to feel, even when they have
acted like fools, I should pity her more. As it is, the lesson was
necessary. If she had not married rashly an Italian _birbante_ she would
have married rashly an English blackguard, and I myself see small
difference in the kinds. With _you_, however, to your mind, it is
different; and in this view of yours seems to me to lie the main fault
of your book. You evidently think that God made only the English. The
English are a peculiar people. Their worst is better than the best of
the exterior nations. Over the rest of the world He has cast out His
shoe. Even supposing that a foreigner does, by extraordinary exception,
some good thing, it's only in reaction from having murdered somebody
last year, or at least left his children to starve the year before.
Truth, generosity, nobleness of will and mind, these things do not exist
beyond the influence of the 'Times'