Like Scott, Mrs. Bray went about with notebook in hand, and noted the features of the landscape, the details of a ruin, or the furniture or armour of the period of which she was writing. It is this painstaking work, together with the fact that she had access to places and books that were then denied to the ordinary reader, and chose subjects and places not before treated in fiction, that gives permanent value to her writings. She also had the proper feeling for the past, and dignity and elevation of style. Sometimes an entire page of her romances might be attributed to the pen of the "Mighty Wizard." Perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid her as an artist is that she resembles Scott when he is nodding. CHAPTER XIV Julia Pardoe. Mrs. Trollope. Harriet Martineau Somewhere between the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, the modern novel was born. The romances of the twenties are, for the most part, old-fashioned in tone, and speak of an earlier age; but in the thirties, the modern novel, with its exact reproduction of places, customs, and speech, and strong local flavour, was full-grown. Dickens, under the name of Boz, was contributing his sketches to _The Old Monthly Magazine_ and the _Evening Chronicle_. Thackeray was beginning to contribute articles to _Fraser's Magazine_, established in 1830. Annuals and monthlies sprang up in the night, and paid large sums for long and short stories. The thirst for them was unquenchable. Many women were supporting themselves by writing tales which did not live beyond the year of their publication. Mrs. Marsh was writing stories of fashionable life varied by historical romances. Mrs. Crowe wrote stories of fashionable life varied by supernatural romances and tales of adventure. In _The Story of Lilly Dawson_, published in 1847, the heroine was captured and brought up by smugglers, and the gradual development of her character was traced; thus giving to the story a psychological interest. Lady Blessington earned two thousand pounds a year for twenty years by novels and short stories of fashionable life. Lady Blessington had a European reputation as a court beauty and a brilliant and witty conversationalist. This with the coronet must have helped to sell her books. They do not contain even a sentence that holds the attention. A friend said of her, "Her genius lay in her tongue; her pen paralysed it." More enduring work in fiction was done by Julia Pardoe, Mrs. Trollope, and Harriet Martineau. * * * * *