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THERE is a wide difference between the story-teller, with no object in view but that of interesting his readers in the unfolding of a plot on which depends the happiness or misery of his hero or heroine, and the moralist who merely employs fictitious characters because they are necessary for the teaching of his lessons, just as lay figures are used by dress-makers for the display of their work. The mere story-teller often teaches more effectively than the moralist, and the moralist frequently writes a more absorbing tale than the story-teller. The story may be stupid and the homily entertaining. Genius breaks through all restraints, shines through all the mists of inconvenient method, and enlivens the dullest themes,—as latent humour will crop out in the pulpit, and set the congregation on the broad grin.

And yet very much depends on the form of the work and the aim of the writer. Only the gifted few can afford to neglect the architectural details, and even they do so at the expense of their reputation.

If mere popularity, as measured by the number of immediate readers gained, were the object of novel writing, the gushingly sentimental, thrilling and florid fictions, which create so great a demand for the literary weeklies, would be chosen as the model of the aspiring author; but every writer worthy of being taken into serious consideration has a higher aim than that he seeks to gain the approbation of the cultivated classes, and have his books placed on the list of those worth preserving.

By the careful cultivation of their art many writers have corrected defects which would, if allowed to grow, have proved fatal to their reputation. Some, finding themselves depending too much on an absorbing plot, have studied human nature and taken extra care in the delineation of character; while others have laboriously constructed, or boldly borrowed, plots which give unity of interest to the incidents attending the development of their wonderfully natural creations. Natural defects are thus overcome, and artistic harmony given to work whose strength would otherwise be counterbalanced by its weakness. is often the case that the part of a book which displays the least strength has cost the author the most effort.

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Wilkie Collins has one of those well-balanced minds in which the constructive and didactic faculties exist in pretty equal proportions. He is an earnest moralist, with story-telling and plot-constructing capacities of a high order, and his productions appeal to the minds of the idle and the earnest alike.

With perfect appreciation of the necessity for concealing the lesson he wishes to teach, and full faith in his ability to make the incidents impart the instruction he seeks to give, he sets himself to the task, primarily, of simply telling a story. I have always,' he says, in his preface to ‘The Woman in White,' 'held the oldfashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story. It may be impossible, in novel writing, to present characters successfully without telling a

story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters.'

In this method of working he differs widely from many of his distinguished contemporaries, whose character drawing is evidently first in their thoughts, and must thank his dramatic genius rather than his theory for the permanent value attached to his works.

Many stories have been successfully told without presenting characters which the world desired to keep up an acquaintance with.

Books are read once for the story, and then, if the characters they present are not interesting, they are cast aside and forgotten.

Mr. Collins, notwithstanding the secondary place he theoretically assigns to character drawing, selects his types with care and elaborates them with skill. Instead of being content to allow them to make their peculiarities known by their acts, in accordance with his theory, he often introduces them so minutely as to leave little to be revealed by themselves, thus showing that they were carefully thought out before being allowed to take a place in the story.

"The Woman in White,' which is esteemed the ablest of his works, is one of the best examples we have in modern fiction of the union of a plot of absorbing interest with characters at once original, strong and pleasing. The presentation of the characters is merely incidental to the telling of the story, I admit, but their conception was a primary instead of a secondary part of the author's work. Laura Fairlie, that lovely and lovable piece of inanity, gets almost as strong a hold on us as she does on Walter Hartright. She is a fine example of the strength of feminine weakness. Hartright and Marian Halcombe, the magnificent Marian' of the 'grand grey eyes' (not the only one of Collins's women with this particular description of eyes), devote their lives to her service, and

it seems right that they should do so. She clings to them and trusts them, and that is all the reward they ask or expect. If it were not for her great misfortunes she would hardly keep her place in the reader's affections, and even as it is we can hardly repress a sigh of regret when her marriage with Walter deprives Marian of the possibility of ever seeing her unspoken affection returned. It does not seem right, although it is supremely natural, that the helpless Laura should win all the strong man's devotion, while the glorious creature who united her efforts with his, in their almost hopeless struggle against the conspiracy of which Laura was the victim, should inspire nothing but a sisterly affection. Such women as she are able to stand alone in this world, and a merciful Providence provides that the men shall fall in love chiefly with the less gifted and self-reliant-with those who are not able to take care of themselves.

[This accounts for the large proportion of splendid women among the old maids.

Anne Catherick excites a curiosity which is not gratified by results, but the interest awakened in her is not at all out of proportion to her importance in the plot. The manner in which the attention is kept fixed upon her, in the expectation that she will make an important revelation respecting Sir Per cival Glyde, when it is a purely passive part which she is destined to play in the great crisis of the story, is very skilful.

Walter Hartright, that fine specimen of constancy, devotion, fearlessness and uprightness; Mr. Fairlie, a unique study of refined selfishness; Pesca, the excitable Italian; Mrs. Vesey, the amiable old lady who 'sat through life'; Sir Percival Glyde, that combination of strong passion and pliant yielding to his evil genius; Mr. Gilmore, the solicitor, who reassuringly informs his clients that they have entrusted their affairs to 'good

hands ; Mrs. Michelson, with her charming faith in the angelic character -of Count Fosco; and Madame Fosco, with her dog-like devotion to her husband, and her inability to distinguish good from evil when he is an interested party, are all faithfully drawn characters.

The great personage of the book, however, is Fosco himself. He is a wonderfully clear-cut type of a somewhat mythical class. With great skill in music, chemistry, and diplomacy; with a magnetic power over men and women; with vast capacities for work; with the faculty of combination well developed; with great executive ability; and with a title and some fortune, he is nothing but a spy in his public capacity and a rascal in private life. Nothing but principle is wanting to make him a leader of men, a statesman, a great diplomatist, or an honoured member of a learned profession. His breezy brusqueness, oily affability, consummate impudence, infectious good spirits, and unwearying activity, make him the life of every scene in which he appears. His management of the brutal Sir Percival, his mastery over his wife, his sublime effrontery, his irrepressible vehemence when he quarrels with the physician's treatment of Marian, his intimate relations with his birds and white mice, his charming manifestations of personal vanity, his hearty and unhesitating yielding to circumstances which he sees to be too much for even his genius to contend with, and, most of all, the one weakness he manifests his overpowering admiration of Marian Halcombe-keep his corpulent form fresh in the mind of the reader. His charming frankness, when he does not consider it worth while to wear the mask of virtue, is enough to make him friends. It is in perfect good faith, and not at all as a satirist seeking to be smart, that he argues that crime is a good friend as often as it is an enemy, and points for proof to the Howards passing virtuous misery in

hovels to minister to misery in prisons. He is sincere, also, when he claims to be virtuous because he carefully avoided unnecessary crime in the perpetration of the great outrage that robbed an unoffending lady of reason, liberty and identity. The reader who can not forget his cold-blooded cruelty, and forgive his offences far enough to look pityingly on the mangled remains which his widow weeps over in the morgue, lacks the charity which all should feel for erring and fallen humanity.

The life at Blackwater, when the helpless Laura is struggling in the toils, and the crazy Anne is hovering around with her supposed secret, is painted with graphic realism; the several steps in the unwinding of the coil of conspiracy which bring Walter slowly but surely to the end, enchain the reader's unwearying attention and the double retribution is brought about in a dramatic and by no means improbable manner.

Most of the writers who find fault with the institutions of their countrywith its legal, medical and theological doctrines and practices—haveremedies to propose for all the ills they discover; but Wilkie Collins contents himself generally with pointing out the evils that exist, leaving to others the work of devising the cure. In this respect he presents a marked contrast to Charles Reade, who prescribes minutely for everything from tight lacing to the treatment of the insane, teaches the doctors how to deal with sprains, and defines the changes that should be made in the statutes.

In The Woman in White' the author indicates, rather than presents and denounces, the evil effects which may result from the law of inheritance, and in ‘The Law and the Lady' the Scotch verdict of 'not proven' is the objective point at which the reformer aims. Eustace Macallan's wife, in a fit of despairing jealousy, poisons herself, and the letter in which she

confesses the deed and bids farewell to her husband, is stolen by a false friend of the family who gains access to her room before the tragedy is discovered. Eustace is charged with having murdered her, the fact of his having purchased poison is proved, his want of affection for his wife is established by entries in his diary and let ters written by her to lady friends, and various other bits of circumstantial evidence are brought forward. The jury, not willing to convict him without more explicit testimony, and yet feeling morally certain of his guilt, take refuge in the convenient verdict which the Scotch law allows, and compromise by giving him the moral without the physical punishment of murder.

Eustace Macallan is crushed by the blow. He looks upon the verdict of the jury as the voice of mankind in general, and refuses to believe that any one can think him innocent. He shuns the woman to whom he had given the love for which his dead wife craved. He changes his name, and keeps scrupulously apart from all who have known him, seeing only his mother and one or two friends occasionally.

While in a retired rural village, nursing this morbid horror of being known to mankind as the man who has failed to be acquitted by a jury of the murder of his wife, he meets and falls in love with the heroine of the tale, and marries her under his assumed name. She tells us, for the story is supposed to be written by her, how she loves and trusts her husband, how she is startled on the first day of their wedding tour by discovering that he is wrapped up in the dark mantle of some secret sorrow, how she learns her husband's real name, and how she acts under the stimulus of the uncontrollable passion that takes possession. of her to penetrate the secret. It is in vain that she is assured that their love will not endure the strain of the discovery, that their happiness, their

union itself, depends upon her remaining ignorant of the mystery in her husband's life. She is only the more eager to discover the secret, persuading herself that she wants to know it chiefly for the purpose of showing that she can love and trust her husband notwithstanding anything of a reprehensible nature in his past life. She does not rest until she discovers the truth.

Eustace finds her in a fainting fit, with a pamphlet report of the trial in her hand, and sorrowfully turns his back upon her. She asks for him, and is told that he has gone. She seeks him, and learns that he has left the country after making ample provision. for her maintenance. He stubbornly refuses to believe that she can love and trust him, with the shadow of the Scotch verdict resting on him. The first cold look, the first harsh word, would cause the dead wife to rise up between them, and there would be no real happiness in their home.

And then she resolves to reopen the inquiry into the death of her husband's first wife, and prove her husband's innocence by discovering the real murderer. That is the only method of curing his morbid state, and winning him back to her. And so the long struggle between the Lady and the Law, the story of which is told in this novel, is entered upon. It seems hopeless at first, light breaks upon the way only to be extinguished and leave. deeper gloom, and promising paths of research lead up to nothing but convincing proofs of the falsity of the scent. And still the search grows more fascinating to the lady and the reader. We know that success must reward her efforts, because she has won a place in our hearts, and we see no other chance for her happiness, and yet we follow every step she takes towards the end with as much anxious interest as though it were among the probabilities that she could fail.

The strain of this absorbing inquiry is lightened, without the action being