ith plenty of fighting in it, was all we asked at a writer's hands. In
order to qualify ourselves for the task which we have undertaken in this
article, we have read "The Spy" a second time; and melancholy indeed was
the contrast between the recollections of the boy and the impressions of
the man. It was the difference between the theatre by gas-light and the
theatre by day-light: the gold was pinchbeck, the gems were glass, the
flowers were cambric and colored paper, the goblets were gilded
pasteboard. Painfully did the ideal light fade away, and the
well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With
incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and
present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of
the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue,
the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the
incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a
candid, though critical judgment could not but admit that these grave
defects were attended by striking merits, which pleaded in mitigation of
literary sentence. It was stamped with a truth, earnestness, and vital
power, of which its predecessor gave no promise. Though the story was
improbable, it seized upon the attention with a powerful grasp from the
very start, and the hold was not relaxed till the end. Whatever criticism
it might challenge, no one could call it dull: the only offence in a book
which neither gods nor men nor counters can pardon. If the narrative
flowed languidly at times, there were moments in which the incidents
flashed along with such vivid rapidity that the susceptible reader held
his breath over the page. The character of Washington was an elaborate
failure, and the author, in his later years, regretted that he had
introduced this august form into a work of fiction; but Harvey Birch was
an original sketch, happily conceived, and, in the main, well sustained.
His mysterious figure was recognized as a new accession to the repertory
of the novelist, and not a mere modification of a preexisting type. And,
above all, "The Spy" had the charm of reality; it tasted of the soil; it
was the first successful attempt to throw an imaginative light over
American history, and to do for our country what the author of "Waverley"
had done for Scotland. Many of the officers and soldiers of the
Revolutionary War were still living, receiving the rewa