moralise out of reason or in a vein too elevated for the character assumed, or a continued effort to be uniformly wise, or elaborately witty, is almost sure to unmask the impostor, and expose the dreaming pedant at his desk; or, if these characteristic marks be wanting, either the narrative is inconsistent with itself, or it contradicts some known and established fact, or there is some anachronism, or other overt act against truth is committed, which critical sagacity seldom fails to detect and punish. But our author is never caught tripping in this way; he moralises to be sure, as much or more than most writers, but then his reflections are always in the right vein; he never steps from behind the curtain to figure away himself upon the stage. Either a vigilance that was perpetually on the watch preserved him from error, or he went right by mere instinct; or he so identified himself with his imaginary hero that he became in fancy the very individual he was creating, and was therefore necessarily always in character. But whatever vigilance he used, he has always the art to appear perfectly unconcerned; there is none of the constraint that usually accompanies a painful effort to support imposture; his hero is not stiff and awkward like a puppet, which has no voluntary motion, but moves freely and carelessly along the stage; talks to us in an honest, open, confidential sort of way; lays his inmost thoughts and feelings open before us, as before a confessor, without caution and subterfuge; and by never asking our belief, never seeming conscious of a possibility of its being denied, fairly compels us to grant it.