We are so much accustomed to see virtue rewarded and vice punished, that we might perhaps have been better pleased to have seen this kind of poetical justice more equitably dispensed; but the cause of virtue is perhaps as effectually served by making it attractive as by making it triumphant, and vice is as much discouraged by making it odious or contemptible as by making it unsuccessful.
It only remains to say a few words of the translator's labours; and although we do not pretend to decide on the fidelity of the version he has given us, or how much his author may have lost or gained in his hands, we cannot but think that we perceive internal evidence of efforts to be faithful, even at the hazard of losing perhaps something of more value in the attempt. However this may be, it is plain that Mr Shaw is himself a vigorous and eloquent writer of his own language, as the extracts we have given may vouch. We feel greatly indebted to him for unlocking to us the stores of Russian fiction, which, if they contain many such works as _The Heretic_, will well repay the labour of a careful examination. There is about every thing Russian an air of orientalism which gives a peculiar character to their dress, their mansions, their manners, their feelings, their expressions, and their prejudices, which will probably long continue to distinguish Russian literature on that of the other nations of Europe, whose steps she has followed, perhaps too implicitly, in her attempts to overtake them in the race of civilization and intellectual improvement.
We have heard of certain cooks, the Udes and Vatels of their day, whose boast it was to manufacture the most sumptuous and luxurious repast out of coarse and apparently insufficient materials. We will take the liberty of comparing M. Dumas with one of these artistical _cuisiniers_, possessing in the highest degree the talent of making much out of little, by the skill with which it is prepared, and the piquant nature of the condiments applied. A successful dramatist, as well as a popular romance-writer, his dialogues have the point and brilliancy, his narrative the vivid terseness, generally observable in novels written by persons accustomed to dramatic composition. Confining himself to no particular line of subject, he rambles through the different departments of light literature in a most agreeable and desultory manner; to-day a tourist, to-morrow a novelist; the next day surprising his public by an excursion into the regions of historical romance, amongst the well-beaten highways and byways of which he still manages to discover an untrodden path, or to embellish a familiar one by the sparkle of his wit and industry of his researches. The majority of his books convey the idea of being written _currente calamo_, and with little trouble to himself; and these have a lightness and brilliancy peculiar to their lively author, which cannot fail to recommend them to all classes of readers. They are like the sketches of a clever artist, who, with a few bright and bold touches, gives an effect to his subject which no labour would enable a less talented painter to achieve. But M. Dumas can produce highly finished pictures as well as brilliant sketches, although for the present it is one of the latter that we are about to introduce to our readers.