it stand alone in our literature.  Let any one read the “Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,” and then Charles Reade’s picture of Mediaeval Roman life, if he wishes to appreciate the way in which Reade has collected his rough ore and has then smelted it all down in his fiery imagination.  It is a good thing to have the industry to collect facts.  It is a greater and a rarer one to have the tact to know how to use them when you have got them.  To be exact without pedantry, and thorough without being dull, that should be the ideal of the writer of historical romance.

Reade is one of the most perplexing figures in our literature.  Never was there a man so hard to place.  At his best he is the best we have.  At his worst he is below the level of Surreyside melodrama.  But his best have weak pieces, and his worst have good.  There is always silk among his cotton, and cotton among his silk.  But, for all his flaws, the man who, in addition to the great book, of which I have already spoken, wrote “It is Never Too Late to Mend,” “Hard Cash,” “Foul Play,” and “Griffith Gaunt,” must always stand in the very first rank of our novelists.

There is a quality of heart about his work which I recognize nowhere else.  He so absolutely loves his own heroes and heroines, while he so cordially detests his own villains, that he sweeps your emotions along with his own.  No one has ever spoken warmly enough of the humanity and the lovability of his women.  It is a rare gift—­very rare for a man—­this power of drawing a human and delightful girl.  If there is a better one in nineteenth-century fiction than Julia Dodd I have never had the pleasure of meeting her.  A man who could draw a character so delicate and so delightful, and yet could write such an episode as that of the Robber Inn in “The Cloister and the Hearth,” adventurous romance in its highest form, has such a range of power as is granted to few men.  My hat is always ready to come off to Charles Reade.

VII.

It is good to have the magic door shut behind us.  On the other side of that door are the world and its troubles, hopes and fears, headaches and heartaches, ambitions and disappointments; but within, as you lie back on the green settee, and face the long lines of your silent soothing comrades, there is only peace of spirit and rest of mind in the company of the great dead.  Learn to love, learn to admire them; learn to know what their comradeship means; for until you have done so the greatest solace and anodyne God has given to man have not yet shed their blessing upon you.  Here behind this magic door is the rest house, where you may forget the past, enjoy the present, and prepare for the future.