He has, indeed, made almost as
clean a break with his past as if he had really been drowned in
the river. When, after the term of oblivion, in which he knows
nothing of his past self, he is restored to his identity by a
famous surgeon too opportunely out of Paris, on a visit to his
brother, the cure, the problem is how he shall expiate the errors
of his past, work out his redemption in his new life; and the
author solves it for him by appointing him to a life of unselfish
labor, illumined by actions of positive beneficence. It is
something like the solution which Goethe imagines for Faust, and
perhaps no other is imaginable. In contriving it, Mr. Parker
indulges the weaker brethren with an abundance of accident and a
luxury of catastrophe, which the reader interested in the
psychology of the story may take as little account of as he
likes. Without so much of them he might have made a
sculpturesque romance as clearly and nobly definite as "The
Scarlet Letter"; with them he has made a most picturesque
romantic novel.
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