And as romance of motive clothes barren rocks in rich hues and waste bogland in golden gorse, it does like loving service for homely characters.  The dialect these people talk, without editorial comment, delights and amuses from its strangeness, and also from the conviction that it is as real as the landscape.  They tell wonderful tales of moor and fen as they tramp the woods or sail on moonlit waters, and sitting by a peat fire of a stormy night, discuss, between deep pulls of Scotch whisky, the Erastianism that vitiates modern theology.  We must look in the pages of Scott for a more charming picture of the relation of clansman to chief.

But Mr. Black is his own most formidable rival.  He who painted the sympathetic landscapes of northern Scotland has taught the reader the subtle distinction between these delicate scenes and those in which nature’s moods are obtrusively chronicled.  There are novels by Mr. Black in reading which we exclaim, with the exhausted young lady at the end of her week’s sight-seeing, “What! another sunset!” And he set himself a difficult task when he attempted to draw another character so human and so lovable as the Princess of Thule, although the reader were ungracious indeed did he not welcome the beautiful young lady with the kind heart and the proud, hurt smile, whom he became familiar with through frequent encounters in the author’s other novels.  And if Earlscope, who has a dim sort of kinship with the more vigorous hero of ‘Jane Eyre,’ has been succeeded by well-bred young gentlemen who never smoke in the presence of their female relatives, though they are master hands at sailing a boat and knocking down obtrusive foreigners, Mr. Black has not since ’A Daughter of Heth’ done so dramatic a piece of writing as the story of the Earl’s death and Coquette’s flight.  The “Daughter of Heth,” with her friendly simplicity and innocent wiles, and Madcap Violet, the laughter-loving, deserve perhaps a kinder fate than a broken heart and an early grave.

But what the novelist Gogol said of himself and his audience fifty years ago is as true as ever:  “Thankless is the task of whoever ventures to show what passes every moment before his eyes.”  When he is heart-breaking, and therefore exceptional, Mr. Black is most interesting.  A sad ending is not necessarily depressing to the reader.  “There is something,” says La Rochefoucauld, “in the misfortunes of our best friends that doth not displease us.”

In Mr. Black’s later novels, the burden of tradition has been too heavy for him, and he has ended them all happily, as if they were fairy tales.  He chose a more artistic as well as a more faithful part when they were in keeping with life.

THE END OF MACLEOD OF DARE

“DUNCAN.” said Hamish in a low whisper,—­for Macleod had gone below, and they thought he might be asleep in the small hushed state-room—­“this is a strange-looking day, is it not?  And I am afraid of it in this open bay, with an anchorage no better than a sheet of paper for an anchorage.  Do you see now how strange-looking it is?”