s a popular novelist; they are alternately gay and sad, they are
spirited and entertaining; certain characters, like the heroine of
'Sunrise,' cast a bright effulgence over the dark plots of intrigue. But
Mr. Black is at his best as the creator of the special school of fiction
that has Highland scenery and Highland character for its field. He has
many followers and many imitators, but he remains master on his own
ground. The scenes of his most successful stories, 'The Princess of
Thule,' 'A Daughter of Heth,' 'In Far Lochaber,' 'Macleod of Dare,' and
'Madcap Violet,' are laid for the most part in remote rural districts,
amid lake and moorland and mountain wilds of northern Scotland, whose
unsophisticated atmosphere is invaded by airs from the outer world only
during the brief season of hunting and fishing.

But the visit of the worldling is long enough to furnish incident both
poetic and tragic; and when he enters the innocent and primitive life of
the native, as Lavender entered that of the proud and beautiful Princess
of Thule sailing her boat in the far-off waters of Skye, or the cruel
Gertrude in the grim castle of Dare, he finds all the potencies of
passion and emotion.

The temperament of the Highlander is a melancholy one. The narrow life,
with its isolation and its hardships, makes him pessimistic and
brooding, though endowed with the keen instinct and peculiar humor of
those who are far removed from the artificialities of life. But Mr.
Black ascribes this temperament, not to race or hardship or isolation,
but to the strange sights and sounds of the sea and land on which he
dwells, to the wild nights and fierce sunsets, to the dark ocean plains
that brood over the secrets that lie in their depths.

Under his treatment nature is subjective, and plays the part of fate.
Natural scenery is as the orchestra to a Wagnerian opera. The shifting
of the clouds, the voice of the sea, the scent of the woods, are made
the most important factors in the formation of character. He whose home
is in mountain fastnesses knows the solemn glory of sunrise and sunset,
and has for his heritage the high brave temper of the warrior, with the
melancholy of the poet. The dweller on tawny sands, where the waves beat
lazily on summer afternoons and where wild winds howl in storm, is of
like necessity capricious and melancholy. The minor key, in which Poe
thought all true poetry is written, is struck in these his earlier
novels. Let the da