e adventure of Belle Isle, wherein Aramis outwits d'Artagnan,
with its epilogue (vol. v. chap. xxviii.), where d'Artagnan regains the
moral superiority; the love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St.
Aignan's story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche, de Wardes,
and Manicamp; Aramis made general of the Jesuits; Aramis at the
Bastille; the night talk in the forest of Senart; Belle Isle again, with
the death of Porthos; and last, but not least, the taming of d'Artagnan
the untamable, under the lash of the young King. What other novel has
such epic variety and nobility of incident? often, if you will,
impossible; often of the order of an Arabian story; and yet all based in
human nature. For if you come to that, what novel has more human nature?
not studied with the microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight,
with the natural eye? What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and
wit, and unflagging, admirable literary skill? Good souls, I suppose,
must sometimes read it in the blackguard travesty of a translation. But
there is no style so untranslatable; light as a whipped trifle, strong
as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's despatch; with
every fault, yet never tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right.
And, once more, to make an end of commendations, what novel is inspired
with a more unstrained or a more wholesome morality?

Yes; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to the name of d'Artagnan
only to dissuade me from a nearer knowledge of the man, I have to add
morality. There is no quite good book without a good morality; but the
world is wide, and so are morals. Out of two people who have dipped into
Sir Richard Burton's "Thousand and One Nights," one shall have been
offended by the animal details; another to whom these were harmless,
perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in his turn by the
rascality and cruelty of all the characters. Of two readers, again, one
shall have been pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by
that of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." And the point is that neither need
be wrong. We shall always shock each other both in life and art; we
cannot get the sun into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there
be such a thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there glimmer
some hint of the great light that blinds us from heaven; enough if, in
the other, there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit of magnanimity.
I would scarce send to th