She cares to teach, not how dishonesty is always plunging men into infinitely more complicated external difficulties than it would in real life, but how any continued insincerity gradually darkens and corrupts the very life-springs of the mind: not how all events conspire to crush an unreal being who is to be the “example” of the story, but how every event, adverse or fortunate, tends to strengthen and expand a high mind, and to break the springs of a selfish or merely weak and self-indulgent nature.
She does not limit herself to domestic conversations, and the mere shock of character on character; she includes a large range of events—the influence of worldly successes and failures—the risks of commercial enterprises—the power of social position—in short, the various elements of a wider economy than that generally admitted into a tale.
She has a true respect for her work, and never permits herself to “make books,” and yet she has evidently very great facility in making them.
There are few writers who have exhibited a more marked progress, whether in freedom of touch or in depth of purpose, than the authoress of “The Ogilvies” and “John Halifax.”
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