Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero. If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance, let it moralize ever so loudly, is still immoral; let it offer ever so much of so-called wisdom, is still irrational. The excellence of a romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the course of human things. _Candide_, which may appear to be an exception, owes its prolonged existence to the charm of style and language; and, after all, how much less it is now read than _Robinson Crusoe_, the work of the talented De Foe; or than the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that simple narrative by Voltaire's English contemporary. Whether or not the cause can be clearly defined is here of little consequence; but an unskillfully developed romance is like a musical composition that concludes with discord unresolved--without perhaps inquiring wherefore, it leaves an unpleasant impression on the mind. If we carry our investigation deeper, we shall find that any such defect violates our sense of artistic propriety, because it offends against our healthy human instinct of the fundamental natural laws; and the artistic merit, as well of a romance as of an epic, rises in proportion as the plot is naturally developed, instead of being conducted to its solution by a series of violent leaps and make-shifts, or even by a pretentious sham. We shall take occasion hereafter to illustrate these views by suitable examples. That the work we are now considering fulfills, in a high degree, this requirement of refined artistic feeling and artistic treatment, will be at once apparent to all discriminating readers, though it can not be denied that there are many of the higher and more delicate chords which _Soll und Haben_ never strikes. The characters to whom we are introduced appear to breathe a certain prosaic atmosphere, and the humorous and comic scenes occasionally interwoven with the narrative bear no comparison, in poetic delicacy of touch, with the creations of Cervantes, nor yet with the plastic power of those of Fielding. The author has given most evidence of poetic power in the delineation of those dark characters who intrude like ghosts and demons upon the fair and healthy current of the book, and vanish anon into the caverns and cellars whence they came.