s I have travelled in these realms of gold, I have yet seen, upon
that map or abstract, names of El Dorados that still haunt the ear of
memory, and are still but names. _The Floating Beacon_--why was that
denied me? or _The Wreck Ashore_? _Sixteen-String Jack_ whom I did not
even guess to be a highwayman, troubled me awake and haunted my
slumbers; and there is one sequence of three from that enchanted
calender that I still at times recall, like a loved verse of poetry:
_Lodoiska_, _Silver Palace_, _Echo of Westminster Bridge_. Names, bare
names, are surely more to children than we poor, grown-up, obliterated
fools remember.

The name of Skelt itself has always seemed a part and parcel of the
charm of his productions. It may be different with the rose, but the
attraction of this paper drama sensibly declined when Webb had crept
into the rubric: a poor cuckoo, flaunting in Skelt's nest. And now we
have reached Pollock, sounding deeper gulfs. Indeed, this name of
Skelt appears so stagey and piratic, that I will adopt it boldly to
design these qualities. Skeltery, then, is a quality of much art. It
is even to be found, with reverence be it said, among the works of
nature. The stagey is its generic name; but it is an old, insular,
home-bred staginess; not French, domestically British; not of to-day,
but smacking of O. Smith, Fitzball, and the great age of melodrama: a
peculiar fragrance haunting it; uttering its unimportant message in a
tone of voice that has the charm of fresh antiquity. I will not insist
upon the art of Skelt's purveyors. These wonderful characters that
once so thrilled our soul with their bold attitude, array of deadly
engines and incomparable costume, to-day look somewhat pallidly; the
extreme hard favour of the heroine strikes me, I had almost said with
pain; the villain's scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and the
scenes themselves, those once unparalleled landscapes, seem the
efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault we find; but on the other
side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the presence of a great
unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap appeals, which a man is dead
and buriable when he fails to answer; of the footlight glamour, the
ready-made, bare-faced, transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with
cold reality, but how much dearer to the mind!

The scenery of Skeltdom--or, shall we say, the kingdom of
Transpontus?--had a prevailing character. Whether it set forth Poland