There is too much _clap-trap_ in the work before us. Most novelists are contented if their hero saves the life of his mistress once in the space of two orthodox volumes. But James thinks this entirely too little. His heroine seems put up like a ten-pin, only to be bowled at; for her life is preserved once from a wolf—once from a robber—and once from an assassin—and beside this, her honour is kept in jeopardy, as a kind of running commentary, through the whole book. We are tempted to say with Titmouse, “’Pon honour—most uncommon luck.” Then, too, everything happens, not as it would in life, but just as it ought to happen. Such a chain of fortuitous circumstances, following each other link by link, we venture to say, author never imagined, since the old romances of chivalry gave up the ghost. The deserted babe passes into the very hands to which it _should_ go—the supposed father gets a place in the police, _the very thing for all hands_—the young lady when grown up falls in love with the son of the _only man living who knows her parentage_—the king is frustrated in meeting Annette, until after Du Barry has given him _a new object of pursuit_—the Baron de Cajore is arrested at the _very instant_ he is arresting the hero—Ernest de Nogent is rescued in the park at Maupay _just as_ he is about to be stabbed from behind—and last of all, the assassin de Cajore is killed off at the end, _in the very nick of time_, and when all the actors are conveniently assembled to look on, at a nice little tea-party in the forest. Nothing, indeed, is done naturally: everything is brought about by luck.
In the second place, the characters of the Ancient Régime are only new editions—by no means improved ones—of the _dramatis personæ_ of James’ former novels. Some wicked wag said that the old dramatists wanted only a king, a fool, a woman, and a villain, to make a tragedy, and Mr. James seems to have taken up the joke as serious. He is like a wax-work keeper: he has one figure, which, by dint of changing the dress, passes for everything under the sun. His heroes and heroines are never dissimilar: he has always one noble and one poorer rogue: he never forgets to bring in a king or a queen, or both; and he fills up the by-play with a few supernumeraries, who talk a great deal and do a very little. If you read one of his novels, you read, in fact, all. Then there are perils, rescues, a duel or two, generally a trial, and now and then a sprinkling of battles, ambuscades, and the like. Sometimes the hobby is one thing and sometimes another, but he never mixes the draught without putting in a little of all the ingredients. In his last novel his fancy ran on battles—in this one, trials appear to rule the roost. To sum up this head, Mr. James seems to be like a horse in a mill, who, though every time he goes his rounds, may kick up his heels after a new variety, never gets out of the same beaten track, or rises above the same humdrum pace.