etting. Since the realist leads us to a
comprehension of his truth through a careful imitation of the actual,
the thing most to be desired in a realistic setting is fidelity to
fact; and this can be attained only by accurate observation. But since
the romantic is not bound to imitate the actual, and fabricates his
investiture merely for the sake of embodying his truth clearly and
consistently, the thing most to be desired in a romantic setting is
imaginative fitness to the action and the characters; and this can
sometimes be attained by artistic inventiveness alone, without display
of observation of the actual. Verisimilitude is of course the highest
merit of either sort of setting; but whereas verisimilitude with the
realist lies in resemblance to actuality, verisimilitude with the
romantic lies rather in artistic fitness. The distinction may perhaps
be best observed in the historical novels produced by the one and by
the other school. In the setting of realistic historical novels, like
George Eliot's "Romola" and Flaubert's "Salammbo," what the authors
have mainly striven for has been accuracy of detail; but in romantic
historical novels, like those of Scott and Dumas pere, the authors
have sought rather for imaginative fitness of setting. The realists
have followed the letter, and the romantics the spirit, of other times
and lands.

As an example of a pure romantic setting, far removed from actuality
and yet thoroughly truthful in artistic fitness to the action and the
characters, we can do no better than examine the often-quoted opening
of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher:"--

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how
it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon
the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like
windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon