ll! On the very basis of the facts you show us, we
know better than to take your word." In other words, when the reader
disbelieves a romance, he does so by instinct, without necessarily
knowing why; but when he disbelieves a realistic novel, he does so by
logic, with the evidence before him.

A great romantic, therefore, must have the wisdom that convinces
by its very presence and conquers credence through the reader's
intuition. Who could disbelieve the author of "The Scarlet Letter"?
We do not need to see his evidence in order to know that he knows.
A great realist, on the other hand, while he need not have the
triumphant and engaging mental personality necessary to a great
romantic, must have a thorough and complete equipment of evidence
discerned from observation of the actual. He must have eyes and ears,
though he need not have a soul.

A novelist of realistic bent is, therefore, almost doomed to confine
his fiction to his own place and time. In no other period or nation
can he be so certain of his evidence. We know the enormous labor with
which George Eliot amassed the materials for "Romola," a realistic
study of Florence during the Renaissance; but though we recognize the
work as that of a thorough student, the details still fail to convince
us as do the details of her studies of contemporary Warwickshire.
The young aspirant to the art of fiction who knows himself to be an
incipient realist had therefore best confine his efforts to attempted
reproduction of the life he sees about him. He had better accept the
common-sensible advice which the late Sir Walter Besant gave in his
lecture on "The Art of Fiction": "A young lady brought up in a quiet
country village should avoid descriptions of garrison life; a writer
whose friends and personal experiences belong to what we call the
lower middle class should carefully avoid introducing his characters
into society; a South-countryman would hesitate before attempting to
reproduce the North-country accent. This is a very simple rule, but
one to which there should be no exception--never to go beyond your own
experience."

The incipient realist is almost obliged to accept this advice; but the
incipient romantic need not necessarily do so. That final injunction
of Besant's--"never to go beyond your own experience"--seems somewhat
stultifying to the imagination; and there is a great deal of very wise
suggestion in Mr. Henry James' reply to it: "What kind of experience
is