himself certain old-fashioned literary airs and poses and artifices,
which you simply wonder at. It is in spite of these, and with all these
defects, that it is so great and beautiful a book.


III

What seems to be so very admirable in the management of the story is the
author's success in keeping his own counsel. This may seem a very
easy thing; but, if the reader will think over the novelists of his
acquaintance, he will find that it is at least very uncommon. They
mostly give themselves away almost from the beginning, either by their
anxiety to hide what is coming, or their vanity in hinting what great
things they have in store for the reader. Galdos does neither the one
nor the other. He makes it his business to tell the story as it grows;
to let the characters unfold themselves in speech and action; to permit
the events to happen unheralded. He does not prophesy their course, he
does not forecast the weather even for twenty-four hours; the atmosphere
becomes slowly, slowly, but with occasional lifts and reliefs, of such a
brooding breathlessness, of such a deepening density, that you feel the
wild passion-storm nearer and nearer at hand, till it bursts at last;
and then you are astonished that you had not foreseen it yourself from
the first moment.

Next to this excellent method, which I count the supreme characteristic
of the book merely because it represents the whole, and the other
facts are in the nature of parts, is the masterly conception of the
characters. They are each typical of a certain side of human nature,
as most of our personal friends and enemies are; but not exclusively of
this side or that. They are each of mixed motives, mixed qualities; none