In a national award the satiric prize would undoubtedly go to the French, whose genius for satire not only gave them preëminence among the peoples in that line, but gave their satire precedence over their other literature. But with this exception, the total effect of satire in the Victorian novel ranks artistically with the highest at large, and surpasses some other elements of the fiction itself. For the nineteenth-century novel is undeniably didactic, and therefore, while it gains in point, significance, and intellectual interest, it loses in romantic interest and esthetic purity. It is here that satire becomes its salvation, for by giving much of the criticism a humorous turn it counteracts the didactic effect, enhances delight, and, to readers of a sensitive response, makes a point that would not be sharpened by increased vehemence. No invective against the Countess de Saldar could be so illuminating as Lady Jocelyn’s thorough relish of her as a specimen. It is of a piece with Mr. Bennet’s enjoyment of Collins and Wickham;[457] with Lamb’s avowal that he would rather lose the legacy Dorrell cheated him out of than “be without the idea of that specious old rogue;” and with the dismay of Don Antonio over the restored sanity of Don Quixote.[458] It is the secret of Trollope’s charm, as Hawthorne indicated when he described the impression of those “beef and ale” novels,-- “* * * as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.” It would have been a saving grace to many of the _dramatis personæ_ if they could have shared the experience of a romantically inclined youth who, after building an air castle in which he figured first as a conquering hero and then as a magnanimous patron, suddenly “came to:”[459] “And then he turned upon himself with laughter, discovering a most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet.” “What a pity it is,” exclaimed Butler,[460] “that Christian never met Mr. Common-Sense with his daughter, Good-Humour, and her affianced husband, Mr. Hate-Cant.” Bunyan doubtless would have replied that he also approved of these somewhat worldly characters, but that they were people of less importance in their day than they became thereafter. The progress of the modern pilgrim is toward a City of Sanitation rather than Holiness, but sanitation is interpreted so widely as to include the soul also in the cleansing process. For this work Common-Sense and Hate-Cant are our efficiency experts; and that Good-Humour should be a member of their household is inevitable at a time when graciousness is accounted not a negligible adornment but a fundamental virtue.