dition while writing
it did not warrant me in pressing what I might otherwise have thought
necessary; but as the little story finally left his hands, it had points
not unworthy of him; and a sketch of its design will render the
fragments from his letters more intelligible. I read it lately with a
sense that its general tone of quiet beauty deserved well the praise
which Jeffrey in those days had given it. "I like and admire the
_Battle_ extremely," he said in a letter on its publication, sent me by
Dickens and not included in Lord Cockburn's Memoir. "It is better than
any other man alive could have written, and has passages as fine as
anything that ever came from the man himself. The dance of the sisters
in that autumn orchard is of itself worth a dozen inferior tales, and
their reunion at the close, and indeed all the serious parts, are
beautiful, some traits of Clemency charming."

Yet it was probably here the fact, as with the _Chimes_, that the
serious parts were too much interwoven with the tale to render the
subject altogether suitable to the old mirth-bringing season; but this
had also some advantages. The story is all about two sisters, the
younger of whom, Marion, sacrifices her own affection to give happiness
to the elder, Grace. But Grace had already made the same sacrifice for
this younger sister; life's first and hardest battle had been won by her
before the incidents begin; and when she is first seen, she is busying
herself to bring about her sister's marriage with Alfred Heathfield,
whom she has herself loved, and whom she has kept wholly unconscious, by
a quiet change in her bearing to him, of what his own still disengaged
heart would certainly not have rejected. Marion, however, had earlier
discovered this, though it is not until her victory over herself that
Alfred knows it; and meanwhile he is become her betrothed. The sisters
thus shown at the opening, one believing her love undiscovered and the
other bent for the sake of that love on surrendering her own, each
practising concealment and both unselfishly true, form a pretty and
tender picture. The second part is intended to give to Marion's flight
the character of an elopement; and so to manage this as to show her all
the time unchanged to the man she is pledged to, yet flying from, was
the author's difficulty. One Michael Warden is the _deus ex machina_ by
whom it is solved, hardly with the usual skill; but there is much art in
rendering his pretens