The defects of _Les Martyrs_[31] are fewer in number and less in degree, while its merits are far more than proportionally greater and more numerous. Needing less historical reinforcement, it enjoys much more. _Les Natchez_ is almost the last, certainly the last important novel of savage life, as distinguished from "boys' books" about savages. _Les Martyrs_ is the first of a line of remarkable if not always successful classical novels from Lockhart's _Valerius_ to Gissing's _Veranilda_. It has nothing really in common with the kind of classical story which lasted from _Telemaque_ to _Belisarius_ and later. And what is more, it is perhaps better than any of its followers except Kingsley's _Hypatia_, which is admittedly of a mixed kind--a nineteenth-century novel, with events, scenes, and _decor_ of the fifth century. If it has not the spectacular and popular appeal of _The Last Days of Pompeii_, it escapes, as that does not, the main drawback of almost all the others--the "classical-dictionary" element: and if, on the other, its author knew less about Christianity than Cardinals Wiseman and Newman, he knew more about lay "humans" than the authors of _Fabiola_ and _Callista_. It is probably unnecessary to point out at any great length that some of the drawbacks of _Les Natchez_ disappear almost automatically in _Les Martyrs_. The supernatural machinery is, on the hypothesis and at the time of the book, strictly congruous and proper; while, as a matter of fact, it is in proportion rather less than more used. The time and events--those of the persecution under Diocletian--are familiar, interesting, and, in a French term for which we have no exact equivalent, _dignes_. There is no sulky spider of a Rene crawling about the piece; and though history is a little strained to provide incidents,[32] "that's not much," and they are not in themselves improbable in any bad sense or degree. Moreover, the classical-dictionary element, which, as has been said, is so awkward to handle, is, at least after the beginning, not too much drawn upon.