This conception--and not alone the pure and lofty nature of the crazy besieger of wind-mills, who, in spite of all, stands forth as at once the worthiest, and fundamentally the wisest character in the book--constitutes the poetic background, and the twilight glimmer amid the prevailing darkness in the life of the higher classes.

We feel that there is assuredly something deeply human and of living power in these elements, and this reality will one day obtain the victory over all opponents.
By what an entirely different atmosphere do we feel ourselves to be surrounded in _Gil Blas_, where the highest poetry, the cunning dexterity of the modern Spanish Figaro, is manifested in the midst of a depraved nobility, and a priesthood alive only to their own material interests.

It is only the most perfect art that could have retained for this novel readers in every quarter of the world.

The _denouement_ is as perfect as with such materials it can be; and we feel that, instead of Voltaire's withering and satiric contempt of all humanity, an element of unfeigned good-humor lies in the background of the picture.

How far inferior is Swift! and how utterly horrible is the abandoned humor of a despair that leaves all in flames behind it, which breathes upon us from the pages of the unhappy _Rabelais_! Fielding's novels, _Tom Jones_ in particular, bear the same resemblance to the composition of Cervantes that the paintings of Murillo bear to those of Rembrandt.