The materials with which she brews her fiery and somewhat heady draughts are almost monotonously alike. Her heroes are beauteous, long-limbed, silky-haired, graceful men: if the scene is laid in England, they are generally officers, always of high family and terribly dissipated. Beneath a quiet, courteous demeanor they hide passionate feeling, indomitable bravery and great capacity for friendship. They are adorned by every vice, and are consequently loved by every woman. As for the women, who except Ouida can describe them? They are faultlessly beautiful, exceedingly headstrong and full of fascinating peccadilloes. Next to the _beaux sabreurs_ come the gifted artists, and alongside of the wicked ladies of rank appear the ladies without rank, but with every other charm of the sinful sort. Brandy and soda, hock and seltzer and cigarettes almost deserve mention among the _dramatis personæ_: they serve to delight her aristocracy, and for the aristocracy Ouida has a most plebeian esteem. Its faults are virtues in disguise: gambling away a large fortune in a night is heroism; faithlessness in love is its first duty; anything like decorum is the most "caddish" Philistinism. These being Ouida's literary principles, and also the delight of her readers, it is easy to see how absolutely useless would be any solemn attempt to prove that there is anything good in the world except wickedness. Ouida has pages of pseudo-rhythmical soliloquy in which she alleges the truth of her statements about lords and ladies, but, whether true or false, there is a charm to her readers in her flowery account of what their social betters do. Scandal never fails of a listener, and who can serve such huge banquets of scandal as will Ouida at a moment's notice? She offers no mere crumb that has dropped from a rich table, but a mass that concerns every duke and duchess and earl and countess in the peerage. Victor Hugo has taught a docile generation the power of the melodrama, and Ouida, an apt pupil, has written in English the most violent protests against human beings as they are, and has encouraged the use of exaggeration in the representation of life. She employs the much-abused method of contrast. She draws a man who is stained with every vice, and to outweigh his crying faults she makes him tell the truth under difficult circumstances, or keep a promise, or possibly do a generous action, and the reader, who has admired the hero at his worst, thrills with fervent pride in his colossal right-doing at last.