highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass and

diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics,
and the few prose tales that have the epic weight. But as from a

school of works, aping the creative, incident and romance are
ruthlessly discarded, so may character and drama be omitted or

subordinated to romance. There is one book, for example, more
generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in childhood, and

still delights in age - I mean the ARABIAN NIGHTS - where you shall
look in vain for moral or for intellectual interest. No human face

or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings and genies,
sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most naked terms,

furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough. Dumas
approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian authors

in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The early
part of MONTE CRISTO, down to the finding of the treasure, is a

piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared
these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing

of packthread and Dantes little more than a name. The sequel is
one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as

for these early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume
extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of

romance. It is very thin and light to be sure, as on a high
mountain; but it is brisk and clear and sunny in proportion. I saw

the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting
forth on a second or third voyage into MONTE CRISTO. Here are

stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can he reperused
at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The

bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an
open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with

bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the
point may be illustrated still further. The last interview between

Lucy and Richard Feveril is pure drama; more than that, it is the
strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English tongue. Their

first meeting by the river, on the other hand, is pure romance; it
has nothing to do with character; it might happen to any other boy

or maiden, and be none the less delightful for the change. And yet
I think he would be a bold man who should choose between these

passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have two scenes, each
capital in its order: in the one, human passion, deep calling unto

deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, according
circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a trivial

but desirableincident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves;
and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give

the preference to either. The one may ask more genius - I do not
say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the

memory.
True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It

reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not
refuse the most pedestrianrealism. ROBINSON CRUSOE is as

realistic as it is romantic; both qualities are pushed to an
extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the

material importance of the incidents. To deal with strong and
deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is to conjure

with great names, and, in the event of failure, to double the
disgrace. The arrival of Haydn and Consuelo at the Canon's villa

is a very triflingincident; yet we may read a dozen boisterous
stories from beginning to end, and not receive so fresh and

stirring an impression of adventure. It was the scene of Crusoe at
the wreck, if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my blacksmith.

Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the castaway
recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever" to the man who reads of

them. They are the things that should be found, and the bare
enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the same

interest the other day in a new book, THE SAILOR'S SWEETHEART, by
Mr. Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig MORNING STAR is

very rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the
books and the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat.

We are dealing here with the old cut-and-dry, legitimate interest
of treasure trove. But even treasure trove can be made dull.

There are few people who have not groaned under the plethora of
goods that fell to the lot of the SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, that

dreary family. They found article after article, creature after
creature, from milk kine to pieces of ordnance, a whole

consignment; but no informing taste had presided over the
selection, there was no smack or relish in the invoice; and these

riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in Verne's MYSTERIOUS
ISLAND is another case in point: there was no gusto and no glamour

about that; it might have come from a shop. But the two hundred
and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the MORNING STAR

fell upon me like a surprise that I had expected; whole vistas of
secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth from

that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in life;
and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right to

be.
To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must

bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art
produces illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in

the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two
minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the

performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with
the characters. This last is the triumph of romantic story-

telling: when the reader consciously plays at being the hero, the
scene is a good scene. Now in character-studies the pleasure that

we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at
incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with

courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are still
themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted,

the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do
they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot

identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugene de Rastignac,
for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not

character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something
happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some

situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realised in
the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget

the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into
the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; and then,

and then only, do we say we have been reading a romance. It is not
only pleasurable things that we imagine in our day-dreams; there

are lights in which we are willing to contemplate even the idea of
our own death; ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us to be

cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus possible to construct
a story, even of tragicimport, in which every incident, detail and

trick of circumstance shall be welcome to the reader's thoughts.
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there

that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life; and when the
game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in it with all his

heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall
it and dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is

called romance.
Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. THE LADY

OF THE LAKE has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the
inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a

story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best
health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in.

Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly
verses, as the unseencuckoo fills the mountains with his note;

hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and
adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession,

not unworthy of that beautiful name, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, or that
direct, romanticopening - one of the most spirited and poetical in

literature - "The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The same
strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels.

In that ill-written, ragged book, THE PIRATE, the figure of
Cleveland - cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of

Dunrossness - moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish
words on his tongue, among the simple islanders - singing a

serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress - is conceived
in the very highest manner of romanticinvention. The words of his