It is the same with the personages.in Mrs Gaskell's works.Cynthia is one of the most difficult characters which have ever been attempted in our time.Perfect art always obscures the difficulties it overcomes; and it is not till we try to follow the processes by which such a character as the Tito of Romola is created, for instance, that we begin to understand what a marvellous piece of work it is.To be sure, Cynthia was not so difficult, nor is it nearly so great a creation as that splendid achievement of art and thought - of the rarest art, of the profoundest thought.But she also belongs to the kind of characters which are conceived only in minds large, clear, harmonious and just, and which can be portrayed fully and without flaw only by hands obedient to the finest motions of the mind.Viewed in this light, Cynthia is a more important piece of work even than Molly, delicately as she is drawn, and true and harmonious as that picture is also.And what we have said of Cynthia may be said with equal truth of Osborne Hamley.The true delineation of a character like that is as fine a test of art as the painting of a foot or a hand, which also seems so easy, and in which perfection is most rare.In this case the work is perfect.Mrs Gaskell had drawn a dozen characters more striking than Osborne since she wrote Mary Barton but not one which shows more exquisite finish.
Another thing we may be permitted to notice, because it has a great and general significance.It may be true that this is not exactly the place for criticism, but since we are writing of Osborne Hamley, we cannot resist pointing out a peculiar instance of the subtler conceptions which underlie all really considerable works.Here are Osborne and Roger, two men who, in every particular that can be seized for description , are totally different creatures.Body and mind they are quite unlike.They have different tastes; they take different ways: they are men of two sorts which, in the society sense, never 'know' each other; and yet, never did brotherly blood run more manifest than in the veins of those two.To make that manifest without allowing the effort to peep out for a single moment, would be a triumph of art; but it is a 'touch beyond the reach of art' to make their likeness in unlikeness so natural a thing that we no more wonder about it than we wonder at seeing the fruit and the bloom on the same bramble: