Plots explode, and incidents, however varied and delightful, unless lit up by the occasional lightning-flash of true eloquence, must after a while lose their freshness.

Borrow was not afraid to be eloquent, nor were other writers of his time.

The first Lord Lytton is now a somewhat disparaged author, nor had Borrow any affection for him, considering him to belong to the kid-glove school; but Lytton's eloquence, though often playing him shabby tricks, now dashing his head against the rocks of bathos, now casting him to sprawl unbecomingly amongst the oozy weeds of sentiment, will keep him alive for many a long day.

As I write, a passage in _The Caxtons_ comes to my mind, and as it illustrates my meaning, I will take down _The Caxtons_ and transcribe the passage, and let those laugh who may.

I will likewise christen it 'By the Fireside':-- O young reader, whoever thou art, or reader at least who has been young, canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, stern world, which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of home, come back to the four quiet walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace, and seen with a sort of sad amaze how calm and undisturbed all is there?
That generation which has gone before thee in the path of passion, the generation of thy parents (not so many years, perchance, remote from thine own), how immovably far off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth.