d yet the ear is never wounded by a tone that is
false. It is not always the case that in novel reading the ear should be
wounded because the words spoken are unnatural. Bulwer does not wound,
though he never puts into the mouth of any of his persons words such as
would have been spoken. They are not expected from him. It is something
else that he provides. From Thackeray they are expected,--and from many
others. But Thackeray never disappoints. Whether it be a great duke,
such as he who was to have married Beatrix, or a mean chaplain, such as
Tusher, or Captain Steele the humorist, they talk,--not as they would
have talked probably, of which I am no judge,--but as we feel that they
might have talked. We find ourselves willing to take it as proved
because it is there, which is the strongest possible evidence of the
realistic capacity of the writer.

As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed that any very high
rank of sublimity is required to put such works within the pale of that
definition. I allude to those in which an attempt is made to soar above
the ordinary actions and ordinary language of life. We may take as an
instance _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. That is intended to be sublime
throughout. Even the writer never for a moment thought of descending to
real life. She must have been untrue to her own idea of her own business
had she done so. It is all stilted,--all of a certain altitude among the
clouds. It has been in its time a popular book, and has had its world of
readers. Those readers no doubt preferred the diluted romance of Mrs.
Radcliff to the condensed realism of Fielding. At any rate they did not
look for realism. _Pelham_ may be taken as another instance of the
sublime, though there is so much in it that is of the world worldly,
though an intentional fall to the ludicrous is often made in it. The
personages talk in glittering dialogues, throwing about philosophy,
science, and the classics, in a manner which is always suggestive and
often amusing. The book is brilliant with intellect. But no word is
ever spoken as it would have been spoken;--no detail is ever narrated as
it would have occurred. Bulwer no doubt regarded novels as romantic, and
would have looked with contempt on any junction of realism and romance,
though, in varying his work, he did not think it beneath him to vary his
sublimity with the ludicrous. The sublime in novels is no doubt most
effective when it breaks out, as though by