is no fault at all in _The Memoirs of David Balfour_. Though novelists
may profess in everything they write to hold a mirror up to life, the
reflection must needs be more artificial in a small book than in a
large. In the one, for very clearness, they must isolate a few human
beings and cut off the currents (so to speak) bearing upon them from
the outside world: in the other, with a larger canvas they are able
to deal with life more frankly. Were the Odyssey cut down to one
episode--say that of Nausicäa--we must round it off and have everyone
on the stage and provided with his just portion of good and evil
before we ring the curtain down. As it is, Nausicäa goes her way. And
as it is, Barbara Grant must go her way at the end of Chapter XX.; and
the pang we feel at parting with her is anything rather than a
reproach against the author.

(3.) It is very certain, as the book stands, that the reader must
experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the
most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James
Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James
Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal
more than half of _Catriona_ points and trembles towards his fate like
a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take _Catriona_
alone. But once more, if we are dealing with _The Memoirs of David
Balfour_--if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our
concern--not James Stewart--the disappointment is far more easily
forgiven. Then, and then only, we get the right perspective of
David's attempt, and recognize how inevitable was the issue when this
stripling engaged to turn back the great forces of history.

It is more than a lustre, as the Dedication reminds us, since David
Balfour, at the end of the last chapter of _Kidnapped_, was left to