with her inclinations; the last is in especial accordance with sound Italian tradition, and all reveal what Heine calls “the melancholy pleasurable awe, the dark sweet horror, of Mediæval ghost fancies.” But a converted witch, walking demurely to vesper service, gossiping with good, garrulous old women on the doorstep, or holding an innocent child within her withered arms—the very thought repels us instinctively, and fires us with a sharp mistrust. Have a care, you foolish young mother, and snatch your baby to your breast; for even now he waxes paler and paler, as those cold, malignant heart-throbs chill his breath, and wear his little life away. The final disposition of a mere earthly villain should likewise be a matter of artistic necessity, not a harsh trampling of arrogant virtue upon prostrate vice. There is no mistake so fatal as that of injustice to the evil element of a novel or a play. We all know how, when Portia pushes her triumphant casuistry a step too far, our sympathies veer obstinately around to Shylock’s side, and refuse to be readjusted before the curtain falls. Perhaps Shakespeare intended this,—who knows?—and threw in Gratiano’s last jeers to madden, not the usurer, but the audience. Or perhaps in Elizabeth’s day, as in King John’s, people had not grown so finical about the feelings of a Jew, and it is only the chilly tolerance of our enlightened age which prevents our enjoying as we should the devout prejudices of our ancestors. But when, in a modern novel, guiltless of all this picturesque superstition, we see the sinner treated with a narrow, nagging sort of severity, our unregenerate nature rebels stoutly against such a manifest lack of balance. Not long ago, I chanced to read a story which actually dared to have a villain for a hero, and I promised myself much pleasure from so original and venturesome a step. But how did the very popular authoress treat her own creation? In the first place, when rescued from a truly feminine haze of hints, and dark whispers, and unsubstantiated innuendoes, the hapless man is proven guilty of but three offences: he takes opium, he ejects his tenants, and he tries, not very successfully, to mesmerize his wife. Now, opium-eating is a vice, the punishment for which is borne by the offender, and which merits as much pity as contempt; rack-renting is an unpardonable, but not at all a thrilling misdemeanor; and, in these days of psychological research, there are many excellent men who would not shrink from making hypnotic experiments on their grandmothers. In consequence, however, of such feeble atrocities, the hero-villain is subjected to a species of outlawry at the hands of all the good people in the book. His virtuous cousin makes open and highly honorable love to his virtuous wife, who responds with hearty alacrity. His virtuous cousin’s still more virtuous brother comes within an ace of murdering him in cold blood, through motives of the purest philanthropy. Finally, one of these