Perhaps the most impressive way of bringing great men into the historical novel, is not the method which makes their lives and careers the central theme of the book at all, demanding intimate treatment, and close appreciation and analysis. Many historical novels are stories of ordinary everyday issues in the lives of people, and deal with some personal concerns of fictitious characters, and with the things that make up the ordinary kind of novel; but these novels become “historical” ones by the fact that their drama is played out as it were in the shadow of great public events. Some well-known, historic character looms in the background, larger historical issues cast their shadow at times and perhaps at some point the narrow concerns of the individuals whose fate makes up the story, cross the path of these, and become interlocked for a moment with some piece of history. In _Woodstock_ for example the homely problems of a few fictitious characters, and the small vicissitudes of a locality occupy the centre of the stage. Their story grows out of a set of historical relations as it existed in the days of the Protectorate, and is a story born of the conditions of the time in the way Scott suggested in the Introductions to _Ivanhoe_ and _The Monastery_. The first chapter of the book brings out history in the form of story, it is a peep at England in the days of the Protectorate, it is a “sample,” a kind of specimen picture of the age and the story is implied in the conditions of the time. There is a suggestion of the awful omnipotence of Cromwell, and a feeling that the distant sternness of his rule is coming near and will soon be brought home to people, but the Protector himself is a solemn figure in the background. There is a kind of impressiveness in the way the story actually crosses his path. The reader is ushered into the presence of the great man, and Cromwell is not treated familiarly--we do not pry into his mind and we do not see through the man, but everything is as though in an impressive moment in real life we had once met the man and felt him greater and more distant than ever. When Charles II comes into the book a similar thing happens; we peep at a corner of his life, we catch one side of him, but the whole man is not laid bare, and we know that there is a world within him that is not revealed. In this way the feeling that to ordinary citizens of the country there is something impenetrable in these great people is maintained. Life to all of us is a chain of private aims and personal concerns and family or homely issues that seem to be all the world to us as they come one after another; but far above we can feel that larger historic issues are being worked out oblivious of our petty concerns, and ignoring our little lives. Only at times do our paths cross. A war or a popular movement at some time may touch the family and even break up homes, sweeping away the issues and affairs that were our little world,