ay seem a very
easy thing; but, if the reader will think over the novelists of his
acquaintance, he will find that it is at least very uncommon. They
mostly give themselves away almost from the beginning, either by their
anxiety to hide what is coming, or their vanity in hinting what great
things they have in store for the reader. Galdos does neither the one
nor the other. He makes it his business to tell the story as it grows;
to let the characters unfold themselves in speech and action; to permit
the events to happen unheralded. He does not prophesy their course, he
does not forecast the weather even for twenty-four hours; the atmosphere
becomes slowly, slowly, but with occasional lifts and reliefs, of such a
brooding breathlessness, of such a deepening density, that you feel the
wild passion-storm nearer and nearer at hand, till it bursts at last;
and then you are astonished that you had not foreseen it yourself from
the first moment.

Next to this excellent method, which I count the supreme characteristic
of the book merely because it represents the whole, and the other
facts are in the nature of parts, is the masterly conception of the
characters. They are each typical of a certain side of human nature,
as most of our personal friends and enemies are; but not exclusively of
this side or that. They are each of mixed motives, mixed qualities; none
of them is quite a monster; though those who are badly mixed do such
monstrous things.

Pepe Rey, who is such a good fellow--so kind, and brave, and upright,
and generous, so fine a mind, and so high a soul--is tactless and
imprudent; he even condescends to the thought of intrigue; and though
he rejects his plots at last, his nature has once harbored deceit. Don
Inocencio, the priest, whose control of Dona Perfecta's conscience has
vitiated the very springs of goodness in her, is by no means bad, aside
from his purposes. He loves his sister and her son tenderly, and wishes
to provide for them by the marriage which Pepe's presence threatens to
prevent. The nephew, though selfish and little, has moments of almost
being a good fellow; the sister, though she is really such a lamb of
meekness, becomes a cat, and scratches Don Inocencio dreadfully when he
weakens in his design against Pepe.

Rosario, one of the sweetest and purest images of girlhood that I know
in fiction, abandons herself with equal passion to the love she feels
for her cousin Pepe, and to the love she feels