But this does not span the full range of this kind of novel; it omits something that historical novelists almost always go out of their way to achieve. Here the incidents and adventure of the novel may be purely fictitious, and the characters may be inventions; and only the world in which they are placed, the currents that sweep over their lives, and the movements that overwhelm them need to be real; the novel is true to the life of the past, and is faithful to the age with which it is concerned, regarding the age as a set of conditions to be conformed with. It is true to the spirit of the age; and may describe the past as a far-country; but it may have nothing to do with the actual events of the past, and with history regarded as a chain of story. Every happening that it relates may be an invention; and it can do all that has just been claimed for it without containing any specific incident that ever took place. It may tell its history by revealing history in its workings in an imaginary life set in it; in the same way as a teacher may illustrate the force of gravity to children by talking about its workings on an imaginary apple. It may be in a way true to history without being true to fact. If a story is told us about some spot with which we are acquainted, then, although the story may not be true, it touches us somewhere, it has a root in actuality and so makes us listen, in a way which would be impossible if the story were told, so to speak, in the air. If we hear some anecdote that is narrated about a friend of ours it holds us even if we know it is a legend, in a way which it could not do if it had not fastened itself upon something real. If a story can plant one foot in actuality then it belongs no more to the clouds, and it gains an added power from having established a connection with reality. It is this kind of additional effectiveness that historical novelists seek to obtain. They are not satisfied that the world of their story shall be true to the world of the past, and that situations and incident shall grow out of that world. Their novel is not merely background, but story, and to them history is not merely the world as it once was, but also a quarry of incident. And once a novel is regarded as a story, and incidents or episodes are looked upon as the important thing, the units in it, the things into which the chapters arrange themselves--then a historical novel is still “in the air,” and is only historical in a vague and unconvincing way, and lacks one of the strongest roots in actuality, if its events are fictitious and its characters imaginary, so that nothing in the story ever really “happened.” There is a great difference between the novel that simply lights up the history of an age, and illustrates the conditions of the time, and one which is itself a piece of historical narrative. It is when the reader can feel that the things that are being related actually took place, and that