Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-12-21
The Romance of The Future.


The Romance of The Future.
The great objections against American
works of fiction have been their lack of
color, incident and historical association.
Much of the novel writing which has
signalized this country is vapid
and pointless to a distressing extent.
Nearly every vigorous human being, for
instance, if it were free from any penal
disgrace, would rather put in given
number of hours at hard labor than at
tempt to wade through novel by W. D.
Howells.
These drawbacks do not attach to all
American fiction. Cooper showed that
the early colonial wars and the fascinat-
ing annals of our aborigines could be
made as fascinating as Scott succeeded
in making the Highlands of Scotland.
Later, in his ewing and Wing" he dem
onstrated that no novelist of any day
could surpass him in availing him
self of the scenery and history
of Europe. Irving, in his "Knick-
erbocker History of New York, I"
proved that the colony of New Amster-
dam was as fruitful of suggestion as any
hoar and consecrated country of Europe.
In his "Sketch Book" devoted to Eng
lish rural life and English customs, he
showed that neither Addison nor Steele
surpassed him in the delicacy and grace
of his old world delineations. Hawthorne,
whom Sir Edwin Arnold, in an inter-
view with an American newspaper re-
porter, described as the most extraordi-
nary writer of fiction that ever
lived, found in the earlier colonial
Gays in New England subjects
for his pen not surpassed in interest by
that Scott or any other
European genius ever handled. Haw-
thorne also, like Cooper and Irving,
showed in his marble Faun" that he
could transplant himself to the old world
and excel any European master of
romance in the grace and subtlety with
which he could weave matchless wool
of poetry and romance from old world
materials.
No country in which epic events, like
that OF our late Civil War happen, is
ever in it's intellectual decadeDce, al
though the temporary success of such
men as Howells would create grave
that we are going in that
melancholy direction. It is momentary
craze, which will be looked back to with
wonder and incredulity by the next
generation.
Assuming that we shall develop writer's
of the standard of Cooper, Irving and
Hawthorne in the future, to what will
they be most likely to dedicate their
genius? There can be little question
but that the late war between the States
will furnish unsurpassed fields for the
masters of fiction who are to come.
There is also little doubt that the losing
side will furnish many of the heroes who
will figure in their fascinating pages.
1t will be a repetition of the magic of
Sir Walter Scott, who consecrated "Bon-
ME Prince Charlie" within two genera
tions of the battle of Culloden. When
the Duke of Cumberland crushed out
the Highland insurrection on that
bloody field, to have avowed romantic
of the Pretender would
probably have led to scaffold. England
from point of policy was undoubtedly
in the right in that memorable struggle,
just as the North was in ours. The
Stuarts we're bad lot, subtle, abso-
lutist, treacherous, and it was sagacious
thing to preserve constitutional govern
ment. OF the least harmful of the
Stuart Kings, Charles II, his principal
courtier, in play of wit on epitaphs,
wrote:
Here lies our sovereign lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did wise one.
Yet Culloden had not been fought
sixty years until the story of Flora Mac.
donald was read with rapture even by
the royalties of the House of Brunswick.
A halo OF romance settled around the
House OF Stuart, and Englishmen who
would have again girded on the sword to
fight for constitutional King, read with
interest and sympathy accounts of the
trials and adventures of the Pretender.
The recent death of Jefferson Davis
shows that the North has already forgot
ten the acerbities of the war. Twenty
years from now, as like as not, some
Northern master of fiction will find in
that chieftain's sensational career the
materials for a fiction as interesting and
as Scott found in the Incl.
dents around which he wove the unsur-
passed story of Waverly.
WE ARE indebted to Hon. John p.
Dunn, State Controller, for an official
statement OF the rate of taxation for the