possess that great name, is not advancing any thing strange in the eyes of those who have read and understood 'Old Mortality,' 'Waverley,' 'Rob Roy,' the 'Fortunes of Nigel,' and the 'Heart of Mid-Lothian.'" _A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays, etc., essay 9._ "We have all heard how the romances of Walter Scott brought history home to people who would never have looked into the ponderous volumes of professed historians, and many of us confess to ourselves that there are large historical periods which would be utterly unknown to us but for some story either of the great romancer or one of his innumerable imitators. Writers, as well as readers, of history were awakened by Scott to what seemed to them the new discovery that the great personages of history were after all men and women of flesh and blood like ourselves. Hence in all later historical literature there is visible the effort to make history more personal, more dramatic than it had been before. We can hardly read the interesting Life of Lord Macaulay without perceiving that the most popular historical work of modern times owes its origin in a great measure to the Waverley Novels. Macaulay grew up in a world of novels; his conversation with his sisters was so steeped in reminiscences of the novels they had read together as to be unintelligible to those who wanted the clue. His youth and early manhood witnessed the appearance of the Waverley Novels themselves. … He became naturally possessed by the idea which is expressed over and over again in his essays, and which at last he realized with such wonderful success, the idea that it was quite possible to make history as interesting as romance. … Macaulay is only the most famous of a large group of writers who have been possessed with the same idea. As Scott founded the historical romance, he may be said to have founded the romantic history. And to this day it is an established popular opinion that this is the true way of writing history, only that few writers have genius enough for it. … It must be urged against this kind of history that very few subjects or periods are worthy of it. Once or twice there have appeared glorious characters whose perfection no eloquence can exaggerate; once or twice national events have arranged themselves like a drama, or risen to the elevation of an epic poem. But the average of history is not like this; it is indeed much more ordinary and monotonous than is commonly supposed. The serious student of history has to submit to a disenchantment like that which the experience of life brings to the imaginative youth. As life is not much like romance, so history when it is studied in original documents looks very unlike the conventional representation of it which historians have accustomed us to."