when Edwin was not in earnest, and did not even know the love that was in his heart. Edwin was doubtless to remain to the end devoted to Rosa, even as Grewgious had remained devoted to the memory of Rosa's mother. There was to have been no bitterness, however, in Edwin's heart towards Rosa, nor painful sorrow in her thoughts of him. A certain wistfulness such as we see already in Datchery, and on Rosa's part a certain sad compassion-nothing more: nothing to pain those who had followed Edwin's story, more than we are pained by the gentle tenderness of Tom Pinch's love for Mary Chuzzlewit—a love as tender and as pure as his love for her as Mary Graham. Between Tartar and Drood, though rivals awhile for Rosa's love, a warm friendship was to grow, in which Rosa, Helena, and Crisparkle were to share while all were to join in changing the ways of dear old Grewgious from the sadness and loneliness of the earlier scenes to the warmth and light of that kindly domestic life for which, angular though he thought himself, his true and genial nature fitted him so thoroughly.

IN the first chapter I have shown that in all Dickens's novels except " Oliver Twist " ("Pickwick " was not a novel), he presented the picture of a villain or a hypocrite, watched by one whom he despised or regarded lightly, but by whom he was eventually brought to justice. I might even have included "Oliver Twist," if it be considered how little either Sikes or Fagin suspect the watch by which Nancy defeats the projects of the craftier villain and of his dupe Monks. However, the theme is so repeatedly worked into the plots of Dickens's chief works that it was hardly necessary to note a slighter use of it such as this, except by way of showing

that the whole series of stories, long and short, is thus accounted for. No one can doubt, I think, after he has examined all the evidence I have collected in the opening chapter, that there was something enthralling for Dickens in this thought of a steadfast watch by an unseen or unnoted enemy, a constant danger lurking where no danger at all was suspected.

I think it clear that in the "Mystery of Edwin Drood" the same effective theme was to have been introduced in its most striking form, in that form which Dickens himself had mentioned in "Martin Chuzzlewit " as most terrible to imagine. Dickens had pictured in his latest completed novel a man supposed to be murdered, but really alive, and watching the associates of the dead murderer of the man who was mistaken for him; and therein he had come very near to the idea he had pictured as the most terrible of all forms of his favourite theme. How he had enjoyed this embodiment of his theme one sees in reading the scene where the inspector proposes to arrest Harmon as an accessory in his own supposed murder. Of all the strange experiences Mr. Inspector had had, that, he admits, was the

strangest. It had for him all the interest of a clever conundrum, the answer to which he had been utterly unable to guess, and, "giving it up,"

"had been told. Here Dickens had come as near as he had till then found it possible to come to the supreme horror-that the dead should confront his murderer-not only (as in "Our Mutual Friend") that some man supposed to be murdered should confront the associates of the supposed murderer, nor even that a man supposed to be dead should confront a murderer, but that a man supposed to be murdered should keep untiring watch upon the man who supposed himself the murderer. This supreme horror was to have been wrought into the plot of Dickens's last novel.

An author's idiosyncrasies must in all cases be considered very carefully. Some novelists like to disclose the meaning of the events described early in a story, so as to leave the reader in no manner of doubt as to the real position of affairs. Thackeray had few secrets from his readers; and accordingly the story which he left unfinished leaves no more doubt as to the ending than if it had been completed and the reader had

turned to the last chapter before he had reached the end of the first volume. Dickens's method was different. He always left his readers-even the keenest-in doubt as to the actual interpretation of mysterious matters introduced early in the story, and as to the precise way in which the story was to end. But he was careful, nevertheless, to introduce a number of little details afterwards found to have been very significant even on these points and to have been quite clear for clear-sighted readers on some matters which the duller readers supposed to be mysterious.

For instance, while I suppose no one guesses up to the last chapter of "Little Dorrit" the nature of the plot in which Rigaud-Blandois, Flintwinch, and Mrs. Clennam were concerned, or the way in which the story is to end, yet everyone of any keenness knows that the old house is to fall before the story ends. Dickens not only made that clear, he meant to make it clear. By a curious accident, the fall of a house excited a great deal of attention a few days before the last section of "Little Dorrit " peared, and several newspaper critics asserted

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