s simple story.

Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no
novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in
sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an
elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching.
And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the
height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me
that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's
death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of
reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in
that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage,
religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end
of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with
all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade
of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most
delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its
best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable.

That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's
death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover
in the _Cloister_ Reade challenges comparison with Scott on Scott's
own ground--the ground of sustained adventurous narrative--and the
advantage is not with Scott. Once more, take all the Waverley Novels
and search them through for two passages to beat the adventures of
Gerard and Denis the Burgundian (1) with the bear and (2) at "The Fair
Star" Inn, by the Burgundian Frontier. I do not think you will
succeed, even then. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that to match
these adventures of Gerard and Denis you must go again to Charles
Reade, to the homeward voyage of the _Agra_ in _Hard Cash_. For these
and for sundry other reasons which, for lack of space, cannot be
unfolded here, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ seems to me a finer
achievement than the finest novel of Scott's.

And now we come to the proposition that an author must be judged by
his best work. If this proposition be true, then I must hold Reade to
be a greater novelist than Scott. But do I hold this? Does anyone hold
this? Why, the contention would be an absurdity.

Reade wrote some twenty novels beside _The Cloister and the Hearth_,
and not one of the twenty approaches it. One only--_Griffith
Gaunt_--is fit to be named in the same day with it; and _Gr