"
We have often wondered that no one ever before grappled with the
material of this last volume. The easy ability of one person to
incarcerate another in a mad-house is as often abused in America as in
England, and circumstances in this drama which might strike a casual
reader as preposterous we can match with kindred and more hopeless cases
within our own knowledge. Perhaps one of the ablest portions of the
treatment which this book affords the theme is in the singular
collocation of characters,--the hero being wrongfully imprisoned as
insane, the heroine's father really made so by medical malpractice, the
hero's sister dying of injuries received from another maniac, his uncle
being imbecile, and his father and one of his physicians becoming
monomaniac. Nicer shades than these allow could not be drawn, and the
subject stands in bold relief as a monument of dauntless courage and
enthusiasm.
No one can hesitate to declare this novel, as it is the latest, to be
also the finest of all that Charles Reade has given us. In saying this
we do not forget the "Cloister and Hearth," which, however tender and
touching and true to its century, is rather a rambling narrative than an
elucidated plot.
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