without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantes[20] little more than a name.  The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for these early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance.  It is very thin and light, to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and clear and sunny in proportion.  I saw the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into Monte Cristo.  Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets.  The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures.  And the point may be illustrated still further.  The last interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril[21] is pure drama; more than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English tongue.  Their first meeting by the river, on the other hand, is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it might happen to any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delightful for the change.  And yet I think he would be a bold man who should choose between these passages.  Thus, in the same book, we may have two scenes, each capital in its order:  in the one, human passion, deep calling unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves; and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give the preference to either.  The one may ask more genius—­I do not say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the memory.

True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things.  It reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most pedestrian realism. Robinson Crusoe is as realistic as it is romantic:[22] both qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither suffers.  Nor does romance depend upon the material importance of the incidents.  To deal with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is to conjure with great names, and, in the event of failure, to double the disgrace.  The arrival of Haydn[23] and Consuelo at the Canon’s villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may read a dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not receive so fresh and stirring an impression of adventure.  It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my blacksmith.  Nor is the fact surprising.  Every single article the castaway recovers from the hulk is “a joy for ever"[24] to the man who reads of them.  They are the things that should be found, and the bare enumeration stirs the blood.  I found a glimmer of the same interest the other day in a new book,