responsible party.

4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and
Miscellaneous Essays."]--There are some narratives, which, though pure
fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave
realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a
time impose upon everybody. In the opposite scale there are other
narratives, which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and
scenes so remote from our ordinary experience, and through, a state of
society so favorable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they
would everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which
attest their fidelity to facts. In the former class stand the admirable
novels of De Foe; and, on a lower range, within the same category, the
inimitable "Vicar of Wakefield;" upon which last novel, without at all
designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive
experiment. I had given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl
of seventeen, the daughter of a statesman in Westmoreland, not
designing any deception (nor so much as any concealment) with respect
to the fictitious character of the incidents and of the actors in that
famous tale. Mere accident it was that had intercepted those
explanations as to the extent of fiction in these points which in this
case it would have been so natural to make. Indeed, considering the
exquisite verisimilitude of the work meeting with such absolute
inexperience in the reader, it was almost a duty to have made them.
This duty, however, something had caused me to forget; and when next I
saw the young mountaineer, I forgot that I _had_ forgotten it.
Consequently, at first I was perplexed by the unfaltering gravity with
which my fair young friend spoke of Dr. Primrose, of Sophia and her
sister, of Squire Thornhill, &c., as real and probably living
personages, who could sue and be sued. It appeared that this artless