Mrs. Gore has so cleverly mingled the so-called self-made men and men of inherited rank in her books that one cannot distinguish between them. In _The Soldier of Lyons_, one of her early novels, which furnished Bulwer with the plot of his play _The Lady of Lyons_, the hero, a peasant by birth and a soldier of the Republic, enters into a marriage contract with the widow of a French marquis, in order to save her from the guillotine. This lady of high rank learns to respect her husband, and becomes the suitor for his love. In _The Heir of Selwood_, a former field marshal of Napoleon, a peasant, devotes his energies to improving the condition of the poor on the estate he had won by his services to his country, and at his death his tenants erected a column to his memory, bearing the inscription: "Most dear to God, to the king, and to the people." Mrs. Gore constantly asserts that the only distinctions between men are based upon character and ability. She says of one of her characters, a poet: "His footing in society is no longer dependent upon the caprice of a drawing-room. It is the security of that intellectual power which forces the world to bend the knee. The poor, dreamy boy, self-taught, self-aided, had risen into power. He wields a pen. And the pen in our age weighs heavier in the social scale than a sword of a Norman baron." Mrs. Gore lived at a time when the introduction of machinery and the establishment of large factories was producing a new type of man: men like Burtonshaw in _The Hamiltons_: "A practical, matter-of-fact individual, with plenty of money and plenty of intellect; the sort of human power-loom one would back to work wonders against a dawdling old spinning-jenny like Lord Tottenham." A critic in the _Westminster Review_ wrote in 1832 as follows: "The wealthy merchant or money-dealer is represented, perhaps for the first time in fiction, as a man of true dignity, self-respect, education, and thorough integrity, agreeable in manners, refined in tastes, and content with, if not proud of, his position in society." Mrs. Gore was called by her contemporaries the novelist of the new era. She was also interested in the great ethical questions of life. She did not write of the love of youthful heroes and more youthful heroines. She often traced the consequences of sin on character and destiny. In _The Heir of Selwood_, she is as stern a moralist in tracing the effects of vice as George Eliot. _The Banker's Wife_, the scene of which is laid among the merchants of London, is a serious study of the sorrows of a life devoted to outward show. The picture of the banker among his guests, whose wealth, unknown to them, he has squandered, reminds one of the days before the final overthrow of Dombey and Son.