=Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825- )= has written many interesting novels, but it has been his perverse fate to live by only one of them. "Lorna Doone" was published in 1869, and although received coldly at first, finally achieved great popularity: and visits to the Lorna Doone country, as that part of Devonshire is called, make part of the travelled education of every literary American. As a master of rustic comedy he stands unexcelled in our day, and the merits of certain other novels--"The Maid of Sker," "Christowell" and "Cripps the Carrier"--may some day become more fully recognised. Not less popular than the novelist of locality--for this description may surely be applied to Mr Hardy and the two other writers I have named--is the novelist of sensation. =William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)= was the most prominent exponent of that School. "The Woman in White," which appeared in 1860 in _All the Year Round_, took the town by storm, but Count Fosco would be pronounced a tiresome villain to-day. With "The Moonstone" and "The New Magdalen" Wilkie Collins secured almost equal success. Although it has been affirmed that a new Wilkie Collins, that is to say a novelist of pure sensation, might even now have a great vogue, it is quite certain that the actual Wilkie Collins has lost the greater part of his.[10] Another novelist who presents himself as little more than a name to the present generation is =Samuel Warren (1807-1877)=. He was a doctor, and, like his homotype, Mr Conan Doyle half a century later, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His "Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician" began in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1830, and was well received, but a still greater success attended his "Ten Thousand a Year," which appeared first in the same periodical. Time has dealt unkindly with Samuel Warren: it is yet to be seen how time will deal with another popular favourite, =Mrs Henry Wood (1820-1887)=, who was born in Worcestershire and made the city of Worcester the centre of many of her stories. The "Channings" and "Mrs Halliburton's Troubles" are her best novels and they have had a well-deserved popularity, for Mrs Wood had a splendid faculty for telling a story. Her even more popular novel, "East Lynne," will probably survive for many a year as a stage play.