The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1880-06-30
The wonderful Reality of Fiction.
[Harper's Bazaar.l

1t is a curiosity of travel that so many
travellers, when they are abroad, visit the
places and haunts of famous fiction as much
as they do those of history and reality, if not
even more.
How many people are there who 60 to
Scotland for no other purpose than to fellow
out the wandering fancies of Walter SCOTS
immortal music, who tramp over the High
lands to the memory of Rob Roy, see that
the purple Trossachs for the sake of Roderick
Dhu. for whom Flodden Field would be bar
rem of interest had "Marmion" never been
written, and who would never see Dryburgh
Abbey, or the ruins of Melrose, or Kenil-
worth Castle, but for the phantoms that rise
to welcome them at the wand of the wizard of
the North2
How many are there, again, who would never
cross the limits of the Italian town that
knew the history of Romeo and Juliet if
Shakespeare had told us nothing of their
love; who neither the heath of Fores, nor
Birnam Wood, nor Dunsiana, would ever
tempt from the beaten path, had not the
witches met the Thane of Cawdor on that
heath, had not Macbeth seen those woods
moving on his stronghold
Who of the wandering band has not looked
for Lord SteyRe's mansion in London as
much as for the solid stones of the Duke of
Wellington's-does not glance for some re-
mihder of the old Colonel and Give New
come among the Bluecoat Boys far more
than for any of the real and famous among
the long list of those boys?
And for whom is not London peopled with
the beings created by the fancy ofhim whom
Lady Bulwer-befOre his death in common
with the crew who busy themselves in hunt
ing out only his follies and blemishes since
his death-styled the Aristophanes Of the
Penthouse and the Plutarch of the Pave, but
whom the world will know, long after his
defamers are forgotten, as the Lord of Laugh
ter and Tears? What is the Court of Chan
Gerry to our travellers, but as it gives them
Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Flyte2 Of whom of
all that have entered the gates of the Marsh
alsea do they reckon but Little Dorrit?
And do they not know the very house that
will presently crack from top to bottom, the
nose goes down when he laughes, sitting
in the window meanwhile? They
walk throug High Holborn to look
for the shop of Poll Sweedlepipes and the
lodgings of Mrs. Camp; they follow Mr..
Pickwick from the city; Brighton stands to
them only for Paul Dombey and ''What are
the wild waves saying2" the dialect of York
shire has no other significance to their ears
than that John Browdie spoke it; Dover is
sacred to Betsy Trotwood and the donkeys;
Yarmouth means the wreck of Stce-forth;
England and the English are, in fact, only
Charles Dickens. Soon now they will be
following the footsteps of Macleod of Dare,
perhaps, or looking up the localities of the
next story writer who stamps his die with
such vigorous action as TO impress all hearts
with the personality of his fancies or his por-
traits.
Certainly this is great tribute TO the pow
er of genius, and to the fact of the existence
of genius in the popular writers of fiction.
For it is not only persons and places that
have just been made so real, but bygone gen.
erations have been infused with such a fresh
life that they have become as vivid to US as
to-day is and scenes and times that would
have been butdry bones otherwise avegrown
animated and human and full of vital pith
and marrow under their hand.
Does not Hawthorne, in the "Scarlet Let
ter and other of his tales, make the people
of the old Puritanic era, that once had been
repulsive to US as ghouls and COLLINS, crea-
lures of flesh and blood, passions and emo
tons like our own, so that we can under
stand them, feel with them, aspire with them,
forgive them2 Do we not picture to our
selves and realize more clearly the domestic
life of ancient Egypt, better than all the
tones of history can teach it, on reading
Theophile Gautier's Romance of Num-
my7" What should we reck of the barbaric
tribes of little peninsula in the Levant,