Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason. This is so not merely in the sense of insanity but of suicide. The Old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The finest lengths of the Elgin marbles consist of splendid horses going to the temple of a virgin.
Romance means a holy donkey going to the temple.
Realism means a lost donkey going nowhere. The fragments of futile journalism or fleeting impression which are here collected are very like the wrecks and riven blocks that were piled in a heap round my imaginary priest of the sun. They are very like that grey and gaping head of stone. Yet I will venture to make even of these trivial fragments the high boast that I am a medievalist and not a modern. That is, I really have a notion of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are.