and have displaced the epic and legendary themes of Scott, Byron,
Campbell, and Southey. _The Two Voices_, _In Memoriam_, _The Ring and
the Book_, _Silas Marner_, _Vanity Fair_, _Bleak House_, dissect brain
and heart, but do not make their prime motive in any thrilling history.
The crisis of modern romance goes on in the conscience, not in the
outside world. Hence the enormous multiplication of the psychologic
novel, a form of art which the eighteenth century would have viewed
with wonder and perplexity. The curious part of this is the striking
abatement of taste for the historical romance, in spite of the immense
extension of historical study and archaeological revival. We know far
more about the past, both within and without, than did our fathers; and
we are always seeking to realise to ourselves the habits, ideas,
aspect, the very clothes and furniture of ages of old, which we study
with sympathetic zeal and in the minutest detail. Yet the historical
romance appears only at intervals. _Harold_ and _Esmond_ are both more
than forty years old, _Romola_ more than thirty years old. They are
none of them quite unqualified successes; and no later historical
romance has approached these three in power and interest. Why is it,
that, in an age pre-eminently historical, in an age so redundant of
novels, the historical novel is out of fashion? Partly, no doubt, our
romancers shun comparison with the mighty Wizard of the North; partly,
the analytic genius of our time so greatly exceeds its synthetic
genius; and mainly, the range of our historical learning inclines us to
restore the past by exact scholarship and not by fiction without
authority. George Eliot was so anxious to have her local colour
accurate that she ended by becoming somewhat fatiguing. Some day, no
doubt, the genius of romance will return to this inexhaustible field
with enthusiasm equal to Scott's, with a knowledge far more accurate
than his, and a spirit quite purged from political and social bias.