. Every detail that can possibly
heighten their suffering is brought out in its place, until we feel
that Life, after all, is more careless, and tell ourselves that Fate
does not measure out her revenge with an inch rule. We see the
machinery of pathos at work: and we are rather made incredulous than
moved when the machinery works so accurately that Philip is made to
betray Pete on the very night when Pete goes out to beat a big drum in
Philip's honor. Nor is this by any means the only harrowing
coincidence of the kind. Worse than this--for its effect upon us as a
work of art--our emotions are so flogged and out-tired by detail after
detail that they cannot rise at the last big fence, and so the scene
of Philip's confession in the Courthouse misses half its effect. It is
a fine scene. I am no bigoted admirer of Hawthorne--a very cold one,
indeed--and should be the last to say that the famous scene in _The
Scarlet Letter_ cannot be improved upon. Nor do I make any doubt that,
as originally conceived by Mr. Hall Caine, the story had its duly
effective climax here. But still less do I doubt that the climax, and
therefore the whole story, would have been twice as impressive had the
book, from p. 125 onwards, contained just half its present number of
words. But whether this opinion be right or wrong, the book remains a
big book, and its story a beautiful story.

MR. ANTHONY HOPE

Oct. 27, 1894. "The God in the Car" and "The Indiscretion
of the Duchess."

As I set down the titles of these two new stories by Mr. Anthony Hope,
it occurs to me that combined they would make an excellent title for a
third story yet to be written. For Mr. Hope's duchess, if by any
chance she found herself travelling with a god in a car, would
infallibly seize the occasion for a _tour de force_ in charming
indiscretion. That the car would travel for some part of the distance
in that position of unstable equilibrium known to skaters as the
"outside edge" may, I think, be taken for granted. But far be it from
me to imagine bungling developments of the situation I here suggest to
Mr. Hope's singular and agreeable talents. Like Mr. Stevenson's
smatterer, who was asked, "What would be the result of putting a pound
of potassium in a pot of porter?" I content myself with anticipating
"that there would probably be a number of interesting bye-products."

Be it understood that I suggest only a combination of the titles--not
of the two stories as