How quietly one sits down to tell events in a tale like this, which made a vast sensation at the time they happened. One reason, I believe, why half the romances and almost all the histories in the world are so exceedingly dull, is, that the people who write them do not believe that the things they record actually happened--no, not even in their histories. They have a faint idea that it may have been so--some notion that such matters did very likely take place; but not that firm conviction, that deep and life-like impression of the transactions which they relate, that gives vivid identity to the narrative. There is always a doubt about history, which hangs round and fetters the mind of the writer, and is even increased by the accuracy of his research. There is some link in the evidence wanting, some apparent partiality in the contemporary chronicler, some prejudice on the part of the near teller of the tale, which casts a suspicion over all. We cannot cross-examine men who died a thousand years ago, and we sit down and ask with Pilate, "What is truth?" The romance-writer has a great advantage. He has the truth within himself. All the witnesses are there in his own bosom. Experience supplies the facts which observation has collected, and imagination arrays and adorns them. In fact, I believe that philosophically speaking, a romance is much truer than a history. If it be not it will produce but little effect upon the mind of the reader. The author, however, must not sit down to write it coolly, as a mere matter of composition. He must believe it, he must feel it, he must think of nothing but telling the truth--aye, reader, the truth of the creatures of his own imagination. It must be all truth to him, and he must give that truth to the world. As they act, think, speak, in his own mind, so must they act, think, and speak to the public; and according to his own powers of imagining the truth, regarding certain characters, so will he tell a truthful tale or a mere cold fiction.