m must wreathe the beauty of love into all the beauties of
the world; whose ideals are spent on one adored object; who, having
lost it, seems to have lost the very sense of love; to whom love never
could return, save by some miracle. But fortune, that had been so
cruelly hard on him, one day in her blind way brings back to his door
the miraculous restitution--and there leaves him to struggle along the
new path of his fate! It is there also that I take up the thread of
the speculation, and watch through its vicissitudes the working of the
problem raised by such a strange circumstance._

_The surroundings in a story of this kind are, of the nature of
things, all those of_ Romance. _And by_ Romance, _I would point out,
is not necessarily meant in tale-telling, a chain of events fraught
with greater improbability than those of so-called real life. (Indeed
where is now the writer who will for a moment admit, even tacitly,
that his records are not of reality?) It simply betokens, a
specialisation of the wider genus_ Novel; _a narrative of strong
action and moving incident, in addition to the necessary analysis of
character; a story in which the uncertain violence of the outside
world turns the course of the actors' lives from the more obvious
channels. It connotes also, as a rule, more poignant emotions--emotions
born of strife or peril, even of horror; it tells of the shock of arms
in life, rather than of the mere diplomacy of life._

_Above all_ Romance _depends upon picturesque and varied setting; upon
the scenery of the drama, so to speak. On the other hand it is not
essentially (though this has sometimes been advanced) a narrative of
mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of
character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said
that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the
touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of
recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the
innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate
situations--and those situations are not found in the tenor in
every-day, well-ordered life: they belong to Romance._

_Spirit-fathers have this advantage that they can bring forth their
dream-children in what age and place they list: it is no times of
now-a-days, no ordinary scenery, that would have suited such
adventures as befell Adrian Landale, or Captain Jack, or "Murthering
Moll the Second."_

_