"Casiri's multifarious catalogue bears ample testimony to the emulation with which not only men but even females of the highest rank devoted themselves to letters; the latter contending publicly for the prizes, not merely in eloquence and poetry, but in those recondite studies which have usually been reserved for the other sex."[25] The style of these sentences is essentially the style of the old _North American Review_ and of eighteenth-century England. The particular chapter from which the last quotation has been taken was, in fact, originally prepared by Prescott for the _North American_, as already mentioned,[26] and was only on second thought reserved for a chapter of the history. The passion for parallel, which had existed among historical writers ever since the time of Plutarch, was responsible for the elaborate comparison which Prescott makes between Isabella and Elizabeth of England.[27] It is worked out relentlessly--Isabella and Elizabeth in their private lives, Isabella and Elizabeth in their characters, Isabella and Elizabeth in the selection of their ministers of State, Isabella and Elizabeth in their intellectual power, Isabella and Elizabeth in their respective deaths. Prescott drags it all in; and it affords evidence of the literary standards of his countrymen at the time, that this laboured parallel was thought to be the very finest thing in the whole book. If, however, Prescott maintained in the body of his text the rigid lapidary dignity which he thought to be appropriate, his natural liveliness found occasional expression in the numerous foot-notes, which at times he wrote somewhat in the vein of his private letters from Pepperell and Nahant. The contrast, therefore, between text and notes was often thoroughly incongruous because so violent. This led his English reviewer, Mr. Richard Ford,[28] to write some rather acrid sentences that in their manner suggest the tone which, in our days, the _Saturday Review_ has always taken with new authors, especially when they happen to be American. Wrote Mr. Ford of Prescott:--