We think, indeed, that all his stories are constructed upon a principle as false to art as it is false to life. In this world, we have first men and women, with certain well-known good and evil passions, and these passions are the causes of all the events that happen in the world. We doubt if it has occurred to any of our readers to see a set of circumstances, even of the most relentless and malignant description, grouping themselves about any human being without the agency of his own love or hate. Yet this is what happens very frequently in Mr. Collins's novels, impoverishing and enfeebling his characters in a surprising degree, and reducing them to the condition of juiceless puppets without proper will or motion. It is not that they are all wanting in verisimilitude. Even the entirely wicked Miss Gwilt is a conceivable character; but, being destined merely to fulfil Armadale's dream, she loses all freedom of action, and, we must say, takes most clumsy and hopeless and long-roundabout methods of accomplishing crimes, to which one would have thought a lady of her imputed sagacity would have found much shorter cuts. It is amazing and inartistic, however, that after all her awkwardness she should fail. Given a blockhead like Armadale, and a dreamer like Midwinter, there is no reason in nature, and no reason in art, why a lady of Miss Gwilt's advantages should not marry both of them; and the author's overruling on this point is more creditable to his heart than to his head. These three people are the chief persons of the story, and their hands are tied from first to last They are not to act out their characters: they are to act out the plot; and the author's designs are accomplished in defiance of their several natures. Some of the minor persons are not so ruthlessly treated. The Pedgifts, father and son, are free agents, and they are admirably true to their instincts of upright, astute lawyers, who love best to employ their legal shrewdness in a good cause. Their joint triumph over Miss Gwilt is probable and natural, and would be a successful point in the book, if it were conceivable that she should expose herself to such a defeat by so much needless plotting with Mrs. Oldershaw. But to fill so large a stage, an immense deal of by-play was necessary, and great numbers of people are visibly dragged upon the scene. Some of these accomplish nothing in the drama. To what end have we so much of Mr. Brock? Others elaborately presented only contribute to the result in the most intricate and tedious way; and in Major Milroy's family there is no means of discovering that Miss Gwilt is an adventuress, but for Mrs. Milroy to become jealous of her and to open her letters.