illains, and yet, for my part, I can
never look upon her marriage with him as other than a _mesalliance_.

Of course, it must be understood, even by those who most violently
disagree with me, that these strictures are passed, not upon
Blackmore's novel, but upon the spirit of the age which made John Ridd
the hero of such a novel, the spirit which in the dress of "John Bull"
has insistently presented our less attractive qualities to the outside
world as the true Englishman, and which has been, by the outside world,
adopted and disliked; while such admirable traits as sincerity,
disinterestedness, and self-criticism, have been neglected by us and
ignored by them.

For the novel itself it is difficult to have anything but praise. The
admirable sense of locality, and the art with which Blackmore has so
identified his persons of fiction with actual places till we no longer
disassociate them, but in the church of Oare, or the Doone Valley, or
Porlock, or Badgeworthy Water, think and speak of Lorna and John Kidd
as if they had had an actual existence; the firm and lively drawing of
the lesser characters, the charming pastoral scenes of the life on the
Ridds' farm, the really magnificent descriptions of the scenery of
Exmoor, and a particular gift of narrative, all place this novel of
Blackmore's on a high level in the literature of the nineteenth
century. His other novel, of which the scene is laid on this coast, is
"The Maid of Sker," less well known and of less artistic weight, but of
interest to anyone visiting the country between Barnstaple and Lynton,
and containing a particularly vivid account of old Barnstaple Fair.

[Illustration: The Doone Valley]

I have spoken of Henry Kingsley's novel "Ravenshoe," and it is
impossible to write of the literary associations of this district
without mention of his elder and more famous brother; for though
"Westward Ho!" deals with Bideford and its adjacent villages of
Appledore and Northam--it was at the latter village that Amyas Leigh
lived with his mother---and this book elects to deal only with the
country from Barnstaple northwards and westwards, yet Charles Kingsley
is the presiding local deity and guardian spirit, who has loved and
lived in and written in praise of the many beautiful spots, cliff and
cove, or valley and orchard, from the boundaries of Cornwall to
Somerset.

The family of Kingsley, also, is intimately connected with many of the
families of these villages.