It is pleasant to know that the ruthless butcher was promptly pursued and slain for his crime, but it is finer still to realize that brief moment of bitterness and shame. I have sometimes thought that Rossetti’s Sister Helen would have gained in artistic beauty if, after those three days of awful watching were over, after the glowing fragment of wax had melted in the flames, and her lover’s soul had passed her, sighing on the wind, there had come to the stricken girl a pang of supreme regret, an impulse of mad desire to undo the horror she had wrought. The conscience of a sinner, to use a striking phrase of Mr. Brownell’s, “is doubtless readjusted rather than repudiated altogether,” and there is an absolute truthfulness in these sudden relapses into grace. For this reason, doubtless, I find Mr. Blackmore’s villains, with all their fascination and power, a shade too heavily, or at least too monotonously darkened. Parson Chowne is a veritable devil, and it is only his occasional humor—manifested grimly in deeds, not words—which enables us to bear the weight of his insupportable wickedness. The introduction of the naked savages as an outrage to village propriety; the summons to church, when he has a mind to fire the ricks of his parishioners,—these are the life-giving touches which mellow down this overwrought figure, this black and scowling thunderbolt of humanity. Perhaps, also, Mr. Blackmore, in his laudable desire for picturesqueness, lays too much stress on the malignant aspect, the appropriate physical condition of his sinners. From Parson Chowne’s “wondrous unfathomable face,” which chills every heart with terror, to the “red glare” in Donovan Bulrag’s eyes, there is always something exceptional about these worthies, to indicate to all beholders what manner of men they are. One is reminded of Charles II. protesting, not unnaturally, against the perpetual swarthiness of stage villains. “We never see a rogue in a play but we clap on him a black periwig,” complained the dark-skinned monarch, with a sense of personal grievance in this forced association between complexion and crime. It was the same subtle inspiration which prompted Kean to play Shylock in a red wig that suggested to Wilkie Collins Count Fosco’s admirable size. The passion for embroidered waistcoats and fruit tarts, the petted white mice, the sympathetic gift of pastry to the organ-grinder’s monkey, all the little touches which go to build up this colossal, tender-hearted, remorseless, irresistible scoundrel are of interest and value to the portrait, but his fat is as essential as his knavery. It is one of those master strokes of genius which breaks away from all accepted traditions to build up a new type, perfect and unapproachable. We can no more imagine a thin Fosco than a melancholy Dick Swiveller, or a light-hearted Ravenswood.