Such speculations, in various
forms and degrees of energy, appear in the world periodically; but the
public conscience during the last thirty or forty years had been gradually
making itself comfortable after the disturbances consequent upon the
French Revolution; the theoretical rights of man had been settled for the
moment; and interest was directed no longer to the assertion and support
of these rights, but to the social condition and character which were
their outcome. Good people were those who climbed through reverses and
sorrows towards the conventional heaven; bad people were those who, in
spite of worldly and temporary successes and triumphs, gravitated towards
the conventional hell. Novels designed on this basis in so far filled the
bill, as the phrase is: their greater or less excellence depended solely
on the veracity with which the aspect, the temperament, and the conduct of
the _dramatis personae_ were reported, and upon the amount of ingenuity
wherewith the web of events and circumstances was woven, and the
conclusion reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in general, little or
nothing more was attempted. Little more, certainly, will be found in the
writings of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly admitted, approach
nearest to perfection of any novelists of their time.
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