vehemently, and it is an even chance it happens:  be confident, you conquer; be obstinate in willing, and events shall bend humbly to their lord:  nay, dream a dream, and if you recollect it in the morning, and it bother you next day, and you cannot get it out of your head for a week, and the matter positively haunt you, ten to one but it finds itself or makes itself fulfilled, some odd day or other.  Just so, doubtless, will it prove to be with Roger’s dream:  I really cannot help the matter.

Again, it is more than likely that the reader is clever, very clever, and that any attempts at concealment would be merely futile.  From the first page he has discovered who is the villain, and who the victim:  the title alone tells him of the golden hinge on which the story turns:  he can look through stone walls, if need be, or mesmerically see, without making use of eyes:  no peep-holes for him, as for Pyramus and Thisbe:  no initiation requisite for any hidden mysteries; all arcana are revealed to him, every sanctum is a highway.  No art of mortal pen can defeat this mischief of acuteness:  character is character; oaks grow of acorns, and the plan of a life may be detected in a microscopic speech.  The career of Mr. Jennings is as much predestined by us to iniquity, from the first intimation that he never makes excuse, as honest Roger is to trouble and temptation from the weary effort wherewithal he woke.  And, even now, pretty Grace and young Sir John, the reader thinks that he can guess at nature’s consequence; while, with respect to Roger’s going forth to dig this morning, he sees it straight before him, need not ask for the result.  Well, if the shrewd reader has the eye of Lieuenhoeeck, and can discern, cradled in the small triangular beech-mast, a noble forest-tree, with silvery trunk, branching arms, and dark-green foliage, he deserves to be complimented indeed, for his own keen skill; but, at the same time, Nature will not hurry herself for him, but will quietly educe results which he foreknew—­or thought he did—­a century ago.  And is there not the highest Art in this unveiled simplicity:  to lead the reader onwards by a straight road, with the setting sun a-blaze at the end of it, knowing his path, knowing its object, yet still borne on with spirits unexhausted and unflagging foot?  Trust me, there is better praise in this, than in dazzling the distracted glance with a perpetual succession of luminous fire-flies, and dragging your fair novel-reader, harried and excited, through the mazes of a thousand incidents.

Thirdly, and lastly, in this prefatorial say, there is to be considered that inevitable defeator of all printed secrets—­impatience.  Nothing is easier, nothing commoner (most wise people do it, whose fate is, that they must keep up with the race of current publication, and therefore must keep down the still-increasing crowd of authorial creations), nothing is more venial, more laudable, than to read the last chapter first; and so, finding out all mysteries