Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/220

I do not know whether a great many people read Bulwer's novels nowadays. They belong to a past generation, which perhaps was luckier than the present. But I do know that the rescue of Glaucus from the arena was an epoch in my childhood, and the cry of joy that rings from Nydia's lips rang in my heart for years. I have an inexpressible tenderness now for The Last Days of Pompeii, because of the passionate suspense with which I read it when I was a little girl, and the supreme gasp of relief with which I hailed the arrival of Sallust and Calenus, while the lion crouches trembling in his cage. It is not easy to criticise a book linked with such vivid memories, and perhaps it is the association with early pleasures which gilds for many of us the beguiling pages of romance. "We are all homesick, in the dark days and black towns, for the land of blue skies and brave adventures in forests, and in lonely inns, on the battle-field, in the prison, on the desert isle." It is useless, and worse than useless, to dispute over the respective schools of fiction, instead of gladly enjoying