Our good English readers are charmed with the man, the woman, or the child, who is introduced to them by the kind novelist as a being without faults.

Do they stop to consider whether this is a true picture of humanity?
It would be a terrible day for the book if they ever did that.

But the book is in no danger.

The readers would even fail to discover the falseness of the picture, if they were presented to themselves as perfect characters.

'We mustn't say so, but how wonderfully like us!' There would be the only impression produced.