romance of all things. It reaches into
the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most
pedestrian realism. "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 trifling incident; 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