philosophy of
romance which is an almost equal betting upon man and destiny. Perhaps
the most profoundly thrilling of all Scott's situations is that in
which the family of Colonel Mannering are waiting for the carriage which
may or may not arrive by night to bring an unknown man into a princely
possession. Yet almost the whole of that thrilling scene consists of a
ridiculous conversation about food, and flirtation between a frivolous
old lawyer and a fashionable girl. We can say nothing about what makes
these scenes, except that the wind bloweth where it listeth, and that
here the wind blows strong.

It is in this quality of what may be called spiritual adventurousness
that Scott stands at so different an elevation to the whole of the
contemporary crop of romancers who have followed the leadership of
Dumas. There has, indeed, been a great and inspiriting revival of
romance in our time, but it is partly frustrated in almost every case
by this rooted conception that romance consists in the vast
multiplication of incidents and the violent acceleration of narrative.
The heroes of Mr Stanley Weyman scarcely ever have their swords out of
their hands; the deeper presence of romance is far better felt when the
sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be
pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper
except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is
employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand,
there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of honour as their
disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of
Copmanhurst or of Mr Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are
described as eating, is one of the most perfect of Scott's poetic
touches. In short, Mr Stanley Weyman is filled with the conviction that
the sole essence of romance is to move with insatiable rapidity from
incident to incident. In the truer romance of Scott there is more of the
sentiment of 'Oh! still delay, thou art so fair'; more of a certain
patriarchal enjoyment of things as they are--of the sword by the side
and the wine-cup in the hand. Romance, indeed, does not consist by any
means so much in experiencing adventures as in being ready for them. How
little the actual boy cares for incidents in comparison to tools and
weapons may be tested by the fact that the most popular story of
adventure is concerned with a man who lived