hailed it. After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense
amusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate,
for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as his best of
determinants. That charming principle is always there, at all events,
to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember, essentially
ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with no cheap
nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and rejoices
thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with their
"Fee-faw-fum!" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.

Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so
speedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all
solemnly appointed and deputed, to "save" Chad, and his then
finding the young man so disobligingly and, at first, so
bewilderingly not lost that a new issue altogether, in the
connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be dealt with in
a new light--promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the higher
branches of the compositional art as one could possibly desire.
Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed with my
survey, I find no source of interest equal to this verification
after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the
better, of the scheme of consistency "gone in" for. As always--
since the charm never fails--the retracing of the process from
point to point brings back the old illusion. The old intentions
bloom again and flower--in spite of all the blossoms they were to
have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of adventure
TRANSPOSED--the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and
outs of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion
admirably objective, becoming the question at issue and keeping
the author's heart in his mouth. Such an element, for instance, as