Mrs. Gore was a woman of genius. With the stern principles of the puritan, and feelings as republican as the mountain-born Swiss, she was never controversial. She saw the absurdities of certain hollow pretensions of society, but her good-humoured raillery offended no one. If her two hundred volumes could be weeded of their verbiage by some devotee of literature, and reduced to ten or fifteen, they would be not only entertaining reading, but would throw strong lights upon the _élite_ of London in the days when hair-oils, pomades, and strong perfumes were the distinguishing marks of the Quality. * * * * * Mrs. Gore owed her place in English letters to native wit and ability; Mrs. Bray owed hers to hard study and painstaking endeavour. She was one of the few women who followed the style of writing brought to perfection by Sir Walter Scott. Mrs. Bray became imbued with the historic spirit early in life. Her first husband was Charles Stothard, the author of _Monumental Effigies of Great Britain_, with whom she travelled through Brittany, Normandy and Flanders. While he made careful drawings of the ruins of castles and abbeys, she read Froissart's _Chronicles_, visited the places which he has described, and traced out among the people any surviving customs which he has recorded. Two novels were the result of these studies. _De Foix, or Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the Fourteenth Century_, is a story of Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, whose court Froissart visited, and of whom he wrote: "To speak briefly and truly, the Count de Foix was perfect in person and in mind; and no contemporary prince could be compared with him for sense, honour, or liberality." _The White Hoods_, a name by which the citizens of Ghent were denominated, is laid in the Netherlands, and tells of the conflict between the court and the citizens of Ghent, under Philip von Artaveld, during the reign of Charles the Fifth of France and the early kingship of Charles the Sixth. As in all her novels, the accuracy for which she strove in the most minute details retards the action of the plot, but adds to the historical value of these romances. For the tragic romance of _The Talba, or Moor of Portugal_, Mrs. Bray, as she had not visited the Spanish peninsula, depended upon her reading. The plot was suggested to her by a picture of Ines de Castro in the Royal Academy. It represented the gruesome coronation of the corpse of Ines de Castro, six years after her death. Thus did her husband, Don Pedro, show honour to his wife, who had been put to death while he, then a prince, was serving in the army of Portugal. The whole story is a fitting theme for tragedy, and was at one time dramatised by Mary Mitford. In order to give her mind the proper elevation for the impassioned scenes of this novel, it was Mrs. Bray's custom to read a chapter of Isaiah or Job each day before beginning to write.