The HISTORICAL ROMANCE is founded on history, but it differs from it in the most essential particulars, and is relieved from the principal difficulties with which the annalist of actual occurrences has to contend. It selects a particular period out of past time, and introduces the characters and events most remarkable for their interest, or the deep impress they have left on the minds of men. This is an immense advantage; for it relieves the writer from the great difficulty with which the general historian has to contend, and which, in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, proves fatal to his success. Unity in the midst of confusion is given to his subject. Room is afforded for graphic painting, space for forcible delineations of character. It becomes possible to awaken interest by following out the steps of individual adventure. Though the name of historical romance is not to be found in antiquity, the thing itself was far from being unknown. Its most charming Histories are little other than Historical Romance; at least, they possess its charm, because they exhibit its unity. The _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon, the _Lives_ of Plutarch, many of the heart-stirring _Legends_ of Livy, of the profound _Sketches_ of the Emperors in Tacitus, are in truth historical romances under the name of histories or biography. The lives of eminent men owe their chief charm to the unity of the subject, and the possibility of strongly exciting the feelings, by strictly adhering to the delineation of individual achievement. So great is the weight of the load--crushing to the historian--which is thus taken from the biographer or writer of historical romance, that second-rate genius can effect triumphs in that department, to which the very highest mind alone is equal in general historical composition. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch with that of Tacitus; but, nevertheless, the _Lives_ of the former will always prove more generally attractive than the annals of the latter. Boswell's mind was immeasurably inferior to that of Hume; but for one reader of his _History of England_, will be found ten of the _Life of Johnson_. Sir Walter Scott's _Life of Napoleon_ proves that he was not altogether qualified to take a place among the great English historians; but, to the end of the world, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth, will stand forth from his canvass more clearly than either from the rhetoric of Hume, or the eloquence of Robertson.