and a chance—­ever so small a chance—­of repentance.”  I wonder whether he did repent when he found himself in the yellow-fever, in Virginia?  The probability is, he fancied that his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his death-bed.  Do you imagine there is a great deal of genuine right-down remorse in the world?  Don’t people rather find excuses which make their minds easy; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have been lamentably belied and misunderstood; and try and forgive the persecutors who will present that bill when it is due; and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes them to the police-office for stealing the spoons?  Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite incorrect).  To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up.  I said to his brother, “Why is your brother’s soul still dark against me?  It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving:  for I was in the wrong.”  In the region which they now inhabit (for Finis has been set to the volumes of the lives of both here below), if they take any cognizance of our squabbles, and tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that my little error was not of a nature unpardonable.  If you have never committed a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be heavy.  Ha, dilectissimi fratres!  It is in regard of sins not found out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and lugubrious minor key), Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus.

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not seldom perpetrate, is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, for my part, I will offer up a special libera me.  This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or old people.  Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker is the most addicted to preaching.  Does he not stop perpetually in his story and begin to preach to you?  When he ought to be engaged with business, is he not for ever taking the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing her with some of his cynical sermons?  I cry peccavi loudly and heartily.  I tell you I would like to be able to write a story which should show no egotism whatever—­in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter.  I should like to be able to feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for more at the end of every monthly meal.