“What a lucky maid you are, my Lorna! When first you came from the Western moors nobody cared to look at you; the ‘leaders of the public taste’ led none of it to make test of you. Having struggled to the light of day through obstruction and repulses, for a year and a half you shivered in a cold corner without a sunray. Your native land disdained your voice, and America answered, ‘No child of mine!’ Still, a certain brave man, your publisher, felt convinced that there was good in you, and standing by his convictions—as the English manner used to be—‘She shall have another chance,’ he said; ‘we have lost a lot of money by her; I don’t care if we lose some more.’ Accordingly, forth you came, poor Lorna, in a simple, pretty dress, small in compass, small in figure, smaller still in hope of life. But, oh—let none of her many fairer ones who fail despond—a certain auspicious event occurred just then, and gave you golden wings. The literary public found your name akin to one which filled the air, and, as graciously as royalty itself, endowed you with imaginary virtues. So grand is the luck of time and name—failing which more solid beings melt into oblivion’s depth.” In short, the dear, dunderheaded add-two-together-and-make-them-five British public came to the wholly erroneous conclusion that “Lorna Doone” was in some way connected with the marriage of Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter the Princess Louise with the Marquess of Lorne; an event which took place in 1871. The times were remarkable for the strong wave of anti-monarchical feeling then rising, in consequence of the recluse life led by the Queen in her widowhood; and there can be no doubt that “Lorna Doone” was, in the first instance, purchased so freely because it was suspected of being one of the many scandalous satires then issued in plenty and bought eagerly. Books have strange fortunes. Their careers hang upon a hair. Many nowadays live but a season: others may be said never to have lived at all. Others yet enjoy a furious, but short, vogue, and then die as utterly as those that never enjoyed real life. The public originally purchased “Lorna Doone” under a misapprehension that was, perhaps, not very creditable, and then read the book and continued to buy it for its own merits. And so it continues to run ever into new editions, and has made the fortune of the Exmoor and North Devon districts, and the adjoining parts of Somerset. Here it should be noted that, although the public persists in regarding “Lorna Doone” as essentially a Devonshire book, it is really chiefly concerned with Somerset.