of the American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of
"In the House of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be,
and I have a faiblesse for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the
Hundred Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium
Eater," and more powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the
sketches of native life--for example, "On the City Wall"--to English
readers they are no less than revelations. They testify, more even
than the military stories, to the author's swift and certain vision,
his certainty in his effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has conquered
worlds, of which, as it were, we knew not the existence.

His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they
hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers
who are blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness
(quite in contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish
life); there is a knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But
that is another story"; there is a display of slang; there is the
too obtrusive knocking of the nail on the head. Everybody can mark
these errors; a few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a
great deal of pleasure.

It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he ventures
on one of the usual novels, of the orthodox length. Few men have
succeeded both in the conte and the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is
limited to the conte; M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best
in it. Scott wrote but three or four short tales, and only one of
these is a masterpiece. Poe never attempted a novel. Hawthorne is
almost alone in his command of both kinds. We can live only in the
hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in so many species of the conte,
so vigorous in so many kinds of verse, will also be triumphant in