The novel “Dross” was produced in America in 1899, having appeared serially in this country in a well-known newspaper. Written during a period of ill-health, Merriman thought it beneath his best work, and, true to that principle which ruled his life as an author, to give to the public so far as he could of that best, and of that best only, he declined (of course to his own monetary disadvantage) to permit its publication in England in book form. Its _mise-en-scène_ is France and Suffolk; its period the Second Empire--the period of “The Last Hope.” Napoleon III., a character by whom Merriman was always peculiarly attracted, shadows it: in it appears John Turner, the English banker of Paris, of “The Last Hope”; an admirable and amusing sketch of a young Frenchman; and an excellent description of the magnificent scenery about Saint Martin Lantosque, in the Maritime Alps. For the benefit of “The Isle of Unrest,” his next book, Merriman had travelled through Corsica--not the Corsica of fashionable hotels and health-resorts, but the wild and unknown parts of that lawless and magnificent island. For “The Velvet Glove” he visited Pampeluna, Saragossa, and Lerida. The country of “The Vultures”--Warsaw and its neighbourhood--he saw in company with his friend, Mr. Stanley Weyman. The pleasure of another trip, the one he took in western France--Angoulême, Cognac, and the country of the Charente--for the scenery of “The Last Hope,” was also doubled by Mr. Weyman's presence. In Dantzig--the Dantzig of “Barlasch of the Guard”--Merriman made a stay in a bitter mid-winter, visiting also Vilna and Königsberg; part of the route of the Great Retreat from Moscow he traced himself. He was inclined to consider--and if an author is not quite the worst judge of his own work he is generally quite the best--that in “Barlasch” he reached his high-water mark. The short stories, comprised in the volume entitled “Tomaso's Fortune,” were published after his death. In every case, the _locale_ they describe was known to Merriman personally. At the Monastery of Montserrat--whence the monk in “A Small World” saw the accident to the diligencia--the author had made a stay of some days. The Farlingford of “The Last Hope” is Orford in Suffolk: the French scenes, as has been said, Merriman had visited with Mr. Weyman, whose “Abbess of Vlaye” they also suggested. The curious may still find the original of the Hôtel Gemosac in Paris--not far from the Palais d'Orsay Hôtel--“between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. Germain.”