must brood, obscurely and sombrely, over the incidents
and the characters.

The characters themselves must be swayed and dominated by Fate;
and not only by Fate. They must be penetrated through and through
by the scenery which surrounds them and by the traditions, old and
dark and superstitious and malign, of some particular spot upon the
earth's surface.

The scenery which is the background of a tale which has the true
romantic quality must gather itself together and concentrate itself in
some kind of symbolic unity; and this symbolic unity--wherein the
various elements of grandeur and mystery are merged--must present
itself as something almost personal and as a dynamic "motif" in the
development of the plot.

There can be no romance without some sort of appeal to that
long-inherited and atavistic feeling in ordinary human hearts which is
responsive to the spell and influence of old, unhappy, lovely, ancient
things; things faded and falling, but with the mellowness of the
centuries upon their faces.

In other words, nothing can be romantic which is _new._ Romance
implies, above everything else, a long association with the human
feelings of many generations. It implies an appeal to that
background of our minds which is stirred to reciprocity by
suggestions dealing with those old, dark, mysterious memories
which belong, not so much to us as individuals, as to us as links in a
great chain.

There are certain emotions in all of us which go much further and
deeper than our mere personal feelings. Such are the emotions
roused in us by contact with the mysterious forces of life and death
and birth and the movements of the seasons; with the rising and
setting of the sun, and the primordial labour of tilling the earth and
gathering in the harvest. These things have been so long associated
with our human hopes and fears, with the nerves and fibres of our
inmost being, that any powerful presentment of them brings to the
surface the accumulated feelings of hundreds of centuries.

New problems, new adventures, new social groupings, new
philosophical catchwords, may all have their vivid and exciting
interest. They cannot carry with them that sad, sweet breath of
planetary romance which touches what might be called the
"imagination of the race" in individual men and women.

"Wuthering Heights" is a great book, not only because of the
intensity of the passions in it, but because these passions are
penetrated so profoundly w