to be there.

But though we are tolerant of discursiveness where it affects only the
flow of the story, we like it less where it disturbs the flow of the
style. A paragraph ought never, by the mere form into which it is cast,
to require to be read over and over in order to get at the meaning. Yet
we are confident that nine readers out of ten would need to read the
following sentence more than once in order to get at its true
construction:--

"Oh, that I were able to conform myself to that further fictitious, not
to say factitious, standard of taste, according to which, just
as,--though a hemorrhage from the nose, howsoever ill-timed,
distressing, or even dangerous to the patient, is comic,--one from the
lungs is poetical and tragic; and an extravasation of blood about the
heart is not inappropriate to the demise of the most romantic civil
hero, (who would seem, indeed, capable of escaping an earthly
immortality only by means of pulmonary disease or some accident, unless
pounced upon by some convenient and imposing epidemic,) while a similar
affection of the brain of an imaginary personage can be rendered
affecting or excusable only by a weight of years and virtues in the
patient; so certain moral diseases, alias sins, in actual life making
the sinner by no means peculiarly engaging, have in fiction acquired a
prescriptive right to our regard!"

But the true power and pathos of the book rise ever high and higher, and
all minor defects are flooded out of sight. It is no small happiness
that we have to do from the beginning with a family hitherto wellnigh
unknown in American noveldom,--a family rich and not vulgar, beautiful
and not frivolous, highly educated and fastidious, yet neither bitter
nor disdainful,--refined, honorable, serene, affectionate. We are not
merely told that they are so. We mingle with them, we see it for
ourselves, and are refreshed and revived thereby. It is pleasant to miss
for once the worldly mother, the empty daughter, the glare and glitter
of shoddy, the low rivalry, the degrading strife, which can hardly be
held up even to our reprobation without debasing us. Whether or not the
best mode of inculcating virtue is that which gives us an example to
imitate rather than a vice to shun, we are sure it is the most
agreeable. It is infinitely sweeter to be attracted by the fragrance of
Paradise than to be repelled by the sulphurous fumes of Pandemonium. The
contemplation of such a home as this book