THE CONSPIRACY HAS appeared an age too late. Some five-and-twenty
years ago,. the minute finery of its workmanship would have raised it to a high rank amongst the productions of the Minerva Press ; but its light would be hidden under a bushel, in a time when something like consistency and probability of plot, truth of character either in the persons or the scenes, and vigour, smartness, or skill in composi- tion, are at least singly essential to success.
What could have induced the author of the Conspiracy to write a romance? Perhaps the common sense and judgment of which he does not seem altogether devoid. He may have read some fashionable novels, and might reasonably enough conclude that he could write as well. He has evidently studied ST. REAL'S Conju- ration contre Denise; and he fancied he had found a very much better subject ready to his hand. There was the city of the Hun- dred Isles, the description of which alone has yet to be done fully and graphically. There was the peculiar state of society, from the gravest, the most polished, and the most licentious aristocracy in
downwards even to the gondoliers and those desperate soldiers of fortune at that epoch congregated in Venice. Let us believe or disbelieve ST. REALS account, a great event was pro- jected, and one calculated to exhibit all the good and evil qualities of the Venetian Government, and all the secret practices of its po- licy or its tyranny. The very obscurity which modern discoveries have thrown over the Conspiracy are favourable to the skilful no- velist, enabling him to mould his materials at will, without shock- ing the preconceived notions of his reader. Then what characters were ready sketched to his hand, if he possessed the power of painting the finished portraits! We speak not of the members of the Venetian Government, or of the lower agents of the plot,—for these the dramatic novelist must create; but of the leading mem- bers of the Conspiracy. The Marquis BEDEMAR, "one of the most powerful geniuses and the most dangerous spirits teat Spain has ever produced," with his fascinating manners, his dignified bearing, and his wonderful political sagacity. RENAULT, with his ill- directed ambition, his preference of glory to virtue, and his cease- less longings after the times of antiquity. Then there was the " man of action" and of piracy, Capitaine JACQUES-PIERRE-
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