result in _Amelia_, from an art point of view, is as unsatisfactory as that of certain well-known pages of _Bleak House_ and _Little Dorrit_. Again, there is a marked change in the attitude of the author,--a change not wholly reconcilable with the brief period which separates the two novels. However it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of _Amelia_ is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of _Tom Jones_. The robust and irrepressible vitality, the full-veined delight of living, the energy of observation and strength of satire, which characterise the one give place in the other to a calmer retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a gentler and more benignant criticism of life. That, as some have contended, _Amelia_ shows an intellectual falling-off cannot for a moment be admitted, least of all upon the ground--as even so staunch an admirer as Mr. Keightley has allowed himself to believe--that certain of its incidents are obviously repeated from the _Modern Husband_ and others of the author's plays. At this rate _Tom Jones_ might be judged inferior to _Joseph Andrews_, because the Political Apothecary in the "Man of the Hill's" story has his prototype in the _Coffee-House Politician_, whose original is Addison's Upholsterer. The plain fact is, that Fielding recognised the failure of his plays as literature; he regarded them as dead; and freely transplanted what was good of his forgotten work into the work which he hoped would live. In this, it may be, there was something of indolence or haste; but assuredly there was no proof of declining powers.