fashion and look at the matter from the historical point of view--if
we put ourselves into the position of the conscientious gentleman who,
fifty or a hundred years hence, will be surveying us and our works--I
think we shall find this elaboration of "locality" in fiction to be
but a swing-back of the pendulum, a natural revolt from the
thin-spread work of the "carpet-bagging" novelist who takes the whole
world for his province, and imagines he sees life steadily and sees it
whole when he has seen a great deal of it superficially.

The "carpet-bagger" still lingers among us. We know him, with his
"tourist's return" ticket, and the ready-made "plot" in his head, and
his note-book and pencil for jotting down "local color." We still find
him working up the scenery of Bolivia in the Reading Room of the
British Museum. But he is going rapidly out of fashion; and it is as
well to put his features on record and pigeon-hole them, if only that
we may recognize him on that day when the pendulum shall swing him
triumphantly back into our midst, and "locality" shall in its turn
pass out of vogue.

I submit this simile of the pendulum with some diffidence to those
eager theorists who had rather believe that their art is advancing
steadily, but at a fair rate of speed, towards perfection. My own less
cheerful--yet not altogether cheerless view--is that the various
fashions in art swing to and fro upon intersecting curves. Some of the
points of intersection are fortunate points--others are obviously the
reverse; and generally the fortunate points lie near the middle of
each arc, or the mean; while the less fortunate ones lie towards the
ends, that is, towards excess upon one side or another. I have already
said that, in the amount of attention they pay to locality just now,
the novelists seem to be running into excess. If I must choose between