is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is
over the affair may be pronounced a success,--particularly in the
light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been
realized towards paying for the new organ.

This is a not unfair comparison of the part played by these books in
modern fiction. The public likes them, buys them, reads them; and
there is no reason why the public should not. In proportion to the
demand for color, action, posturing, and excessive gesticulation,
these books have a financial success; in proportion to the
conscientiousness of the artist who creates them they have a literary
vitality. But they bear to the actual modern novel a relation not
unlike that which _The Castle of Otranto_ bears to _Tom
Jones_,--making allowance of course for the chronological discrepancy.

From one point the heroic novel is a protest against the commonplace
and stupid elements of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic Harrison
there is no romance left in us. Life is stale and flat; yet even Mr.
Harrison would hardly go to the length of declaring that it is also
commercially unprofitable. The artificial apartment-house romance is
one expression of the revolt against the duller elements in our
civilization; and as has often been pointed out, the novel of
psychological horrors is another expression.

There are a few men, however, whose work is not accounted for by
saying that they love theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
that they write fiction as a protest against the times in which they
live. Stevenson was of this number. He was an adventurer by
inheritance and by practice. He came of a race of adventurers,
adventurers who built lighthouses and fought with that bold outlaw,
the Sea. He himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived, a wild
life. There is no truer touch of nature than in the scene where St.
Ives tells the boy Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic astonishment depicted in
the lad's face.

Rowley 'had a high sense of romance and a secret cultus for all
soldiers and criminals. His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the Old Bailey Sessions
Papers; ... and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can
imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition.
To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
murderer rolle