The success of many of the novels of recent times, in the conception of which most genius has been evinced, and in the composition most labour bestowed, has been endangered, if not destroyed, by inattention to this principle in the choice of a subject. There is great talent, much learning, and vigorous conception, in the _Last Days of Pompeii_ by Bulwer; and the catastrophe with which it concludes is drawn with his very highest powers; but still it is felt by every class of readers to be uninteresting. We have no acquaintance or association with Roman manners; we know little of their habits; scarce any thing of their conversation in private: they stand forth to us in history in a sort of shadowy grandeur, totally distinct from the interest of novelist composition. No amount of learning or talent can make the dialogues of Titus and Lucius, of Gallius and Vespasia, interesting to a modern reader. On the other hand, the _Last of the Barons_ is an admirably chosen historical subject, worked out with even more than the author's usual power and effect; and but for a defect in composition, to be hereafter noticed, it would be one of the most popular of all his productions. Great talent and uncommon powers of description have been displayed in Oriental novels; but they have not attained any lasting reputation--not from any fault on the part of the writers, but the want of sympathy in the great majority of readers with the subject of their compositions. Strange to say, we feel nothing foreign in James's _Attila_. So deeply were we impregnated with barbarian blood--so strongly have Scythian customs and ideas descended to our times--that the wooden palace of the chief of the Huns, surrounded with its streets of carts, and myriads of flocks and herds, in the centre of Hungary, is felt as nothing alien. On the other hand, some of Sir Walter's later productions have failed, notwithstanding great ability in the execution, from undue strangeness in the subject. _Anne of Geierstein_, and the Indian story in the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, belong to this class; and even if _Robert of Paris_ had not been written during the decay of the author's mental powers, it would probably have failed, from the impossibility of communicating any of the interest of a novel to a story of the Lower Empire.