easily.  It is no task for suns to shine.  And it will bring back many pleasant remembrances to the minds of many readers, to open these new volumes, and find themselves at once in the same kindly atmosphere as ever; to find that the old spring is flowing yet.  The new series of Friends in Council is precisely what the intelligent reader must have expected.  A thoroughly good writer can never surprise us.  A writer whom we have studied, mused over, sympathized with, can surprise us only by doing something eccentric, affected, unworthy of himself.  The more thoroughly we have sympathized with him; the more closely we have marked not only the strong characteristics which are already present in what he writes, but those little matters which may be the germs of possible new characteristics; the less likely is it that we shall be surprised by anything he does or says.  It is so with the author of Friends in Council.  We know precisely what to expect from him.  We should feel aggrieved if he gave us anything else.  Of course there will be much wisdom and depth of insight; much strong practical sense:  there will be playfulness, pensiveness, pathos; great fairness and justice; much kindness of heart; something of the romantic element; and as for Style, there will be language always free from the least trace of affectation; always clear and comprehensible; never slovenly; sometimes remarkable for a certain simple felicity; sometimes rising into force and eloquence of a very high order:  a style, in short, not to be parodied, not to be caricatured, not to be imitated except by writing as well.  The author cannot sink below our expectations; cannot rise above them.  He has already written so much, and so many thoughtful readers have so carefully studied what he has written, that we know the exact length of his tether, and he can say nothing for which we are not prepared.  You know exactly what to expect in this new work.  You could not, indeed, produce it; you could not describe it, you could not say beforehand what it will be; but when you come upon it, you will feel that it is just what you were sure it would be.  You were sure, as you are sure what will be the flavour of the fruit on your pet apple-tree, which you have tasted a hundred times.  The tree is quite certain to produce that fruit which you remember and like so well; it is its nature to do so.  And the analogy holds further.  For, as little variations in weather or in the treatment of the tree—­a dry season, or some special application to the roots—­may somewhat alter the fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circumstances a little affect an author’s writings, but only within a certain range.  The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab.