Dorian's one remaining ally, especially when he exclaims,
"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be
going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown
tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use.
You and I are what we are, and we will be what we will be." Had not the
hero stabbed himself, or his picture (which was it?) it is only a
question of time how soon Dorian Gray, with the slightest obtrusion of
conscience, would have ceased to charm him who had welcomed him as a
_debutant_ on the Stage of Pleasure, where, to use his favourite saying,
"the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Dorian Gray
struggling against the temptations of the world would have proved an
inartistic and disturbing element in the life of Lord Henry.

All that is needed to complete the tale is Lord Henry's own comment on
the highly dramatic taking-off of his friend. This chapter, Mr. Wilde,
true to his artistic instinct, has not finished, preferring to leave
appetite unappeased, rather than to create satiety by making his
Mephistopheles say precisely what one would expect him to say under the
circumstances.

[28] _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890._

[29] "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are
not always happy."--DORIAN GRAY, chap. vi. (Ed.)

[30] Chapter XI. in the 1891 edition.

* * * * *

THE ROMANCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.[31]

Fiction which flies at all game, has latterly taken to the Impossible as
its quarry. The pursuit is interesting and edifying, if one goes
properly equipped, and with adequate skill. But if due care is not
exercised, the impossible turns upon the hunter and grinds him to
powder. It is a very dangerous and treacherous kind of wild-fowl. The
conditions of its existence--if existence can be predicted of that which
does not exist--are so peculiar and abstruse that only genius is really
capable of taming it and leading it captive. But the capture, when it is
made, is so delightful and fascinating that every tyro would like to
try. One is reminded of the princess of the fairy-tale, who was to be
won on certain preposterous terms, and if the terms were not met, the
discomfited suitor lost his head. Many misguided or over-weening youths
perished; at last the One succeeded. Failure in a romance of the
Impossible is apt to be a disastrous fai