history were exhausted, and that modern story would never present the moving incidents of ancient story, on the verge of the French Revolution and the European war—of the Reign of Terror and the Moscow retreat. Such was the reply of Time to the complaint that political incident was worn out. Not less decisive was the answer which the genius of the Scottish bard afforded to the opinion, that the treasures of original thought were exhausted, and that nothing now remained for the sons of men. In the midst of that delusion he wrote 'Waverley'; and the effect was like the sun bursting through the clouds." _Historical Romance (Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1845)._ {1654} "Those sticklers for truth, who reproach Scott with having falsified history because he wilfully confused dates, forget the far greater truth which that wonderful writer generally presented. If, for his purposes, he disarranged the order of events a little; no grave historian ever succeeded better in painting the character of the epoch. He committed errors of detail enough to make Mrs. Markham shudder. He divined important historical truth which had escaped the sagacity of all historians. A great authority, Augustin Thierry, has pronounced Scott the greatest of all historical divinators." _G. H. Lewes, Historical Romance (Westminster Review, March, 1846)._ "The novel of Ivanhoe places us four generations after the invasion of the Normans, in the reign of Richard, son of Henry Plantagenet, sixth king since the conqueror. At this period, at which the historian Hume can only represent to us a king and England, without telling us what a king is, nor what he means by England, Walter Scott, entering profoundly into the examination of events, shows us classes of men, distinct interests and conditions, two nations, a double language, customs which repel and combat each other; on one side tyranny and insolence, on the other misery and hatred, real developments of the drama of the conquest, of which the battle of Hastings had been only the prologue. … In the midst of the world which no longer exists, Walter Scott always places the world which does and always will exist, that is to say, human nature, of which he knows all the secrets. Everything peculiar to the time and place, the exterior of men, the aspect of the country and of the habitations, costumes, and manners, are described with the most minute truthfulness; and yet the immense erudition which has furnished so many details is nowhere to be perceived. Walter Scott seems to have for the past that second sight, which in times of ignorance, certain men attributed to themselves for the future. To say that there is more real history in his novels on Scotland and England than in the philosophically false compilations which still