'A story the principal personage of which shall seem always on the
point of entering on the scene, but shall never appear.'


This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of
Richelieu in MARION DELORME, and of Captain Flint in TREASURE
ISLAND.


'The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after
being seen humble and cringing in the streets of a city for many
years, at length by some means or other gets admittance into a rich
man's mansion, and there dies - assuming state, and striking awe
into the breasts of those who had looked down upon him.'


These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that gives
life to a romance - of acts or attitudes that stamp themselves upon
the mind's eye. Some of them appeal chiefly to the mind's eye,
others are of value chiefly as symbols. But, for the most part,
the romantic kernel of a story is neither pure picture nor pure
allegory, it can neither be painted nor moralised. It makes its
most irresistible appeal neither to the eye that searches for form
and colour, nor to the reason that seeks for abstract truth, but to
the blood, to all that dim instinct of danger, mystery, and
sympathy in things that is man's oldest inheritance - to the
superstitions of the heart. Romance vindicates the supernatural
against science and rescues it from the palsied tutelage of