Miss Cranstoun listened to the ballad with more attention than Diana vouchsafed to her lover’s translation from Ariosto (it was certainly better worth hearing), gave Scott his meed of praise and encouragement, and remained his friend, confidant and critic until her marriage separated them forever. There are certain points of resemblance between this clever woman and the high-spirited girl whom Justice Inglewood calls the “heath-bell of Cheviot,” and MacGregor “a daft hempsie but a mettle quean.” It may be that Diana owes her vitality to Scott’s faithful remembrance of Miss Cranstoun, just as Jeanie Deans owes her rare and perfect naturalness to his clear conception of her noble prototype, Helen Walker. “A novel is history without documents, nothing to prove it,” said Mr. John Richard Green; but unproved verities, as unassailable as unheard melodies, have a knack of surviving the rack and ruin of time. When Thackeray courageously gave to the world “a novel without a hero,” he atoned for his oversight by enriching it with two heroines, so carefully portrayed, so admirably contrasted, that each strengthens and perfects the other. Just as Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart are etched together on the pages of history with a vivid intensity which singly they might have missed, so Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp (_place à la vertu_) are etched together on the pages of fiction with a distinctness derived in part from the force of comparison. And just as readers of history have been divided for more than three hundred years into adherents of the rival queens, so readers of novels have been divided for more than seventy years into admirers of the rival heroines. “I have been Emmy’s faithful knight since I was ten years old, and read ‘Vanity Fair’ somewhat stealthily,” confessed Andrew Lang; and by way of proving his allegiance, he laid at his lady’s feet the stupidest repudiation of Rebecca ever voiced by a man of letters. To class her with Barnes Newcome and Mrs. Macknezie is an unpardonable affront. A man may be a perfect Sir Galahad without surrendering all sense of values and proportion.