The novel is unlucky, perhaps, in the period chosen, which is not sufficiently familiar to most readers. The forlorn cause of the House of Lancaster now affects us very little, and the passion of Margaret of Anjou is remote--it cannot stir us like the last view of the King, in "Redgauntlet." The mechanism of the volume does suggest the favourite topics of Mrs. Radcliffe, and the mysterious appearances and disappearances of the heroine need a more plausible explanation than they receive. The prophecy turning on the drawing of the bow is rather dropped out of sight, and the magic scenes connected with the opal and the mysterious bride suffer from being explained away. The miracle is more easy of belief than the explanation. Though Charles the Bold is painted with power in his pride and in his fall, he does not interest us like Louis XI. or James VI., either in this novel or in "Quentin Durward." It is probable enough that Scott, in his intended continuation of "Quentin Durward," had this very period in his eye: perhaps we need not regret that, with failing powers, he left Quentin out of the tale. His place is filled by the good dull Sigismund, who always warms up into a kind of brilliance when action is to be taken or described. The hero and heroine do not differ much from Scott's usual characters, in similar romantic circumstances, but Anne has less of originality and charm, of course, than the women of his earlier novels. The story, even on the least favourable estimate, is a rapid novel of adventure: incident follows incident, and, as a modern critic says, "the novel of character is one we often take up, the novel of incident is one we cannot lay down;" if it be written with the spirit of Scott, or of Dumas. That friendly master of romance was just about to take up the pen which fell from the fingers of Sir Walter-- Uno avulso non deficit alter. Scott's imitators, in his lifetime, produced little or nothing of merit: he was, however, to leave successors, the author of "Vingt Ans Après" first and greatest; the author of "Esmond"; the author, we may surely add, of "The Master of Ballantrae." Much as these differ from Scott, both in quantity and quality of genius, in method, in style, they are all "sealed of his tribe," like the spiritual children of Ben Jonson. Scott is he Without whose life they had not been,