indignity to hasten. And this more leisurely,
and certainly more classical, conduct of his
stories makes us remember them more fully and
faithfully than those of the author of the
'Woman in White.' Mr. Collins is generally
dramatic, and sometimes stagy, in his effects.
Le Fanu, while less careful to arrange his plots,
so as to admit of their being readily adapted
for the stage, often surprises us by scenes of so
much greater tragic intensity that we cannot
but lament that he did not, as Mr. Collins has
done, attempt the drama, and so furnish another
ground of comparison with his fellow-countryman,
Maturin (also, if we mistake not, of French
origin), whom, in his writings, Le Fanu far
more closely resembles than Mr. Collins, as a
master of the darker and stronger emotions of
human character. But, to institute a broader
ground of comparison between Le Fanu and
Mr. Collins, whilst the idiosyncrasies of the
former's characters, however immaterial those
characters may be, seem always to suggest the
minutest detail of his story, the latter would
appear to consider plot as the prime, character
as a subsidiary element in the art of novel
writing.

Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le
Fanu's friendship, and only they, can form any
idea of the true character of the man; for after