Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849

No. CCCCX.
DECEMBER, 1849.
Vol. LXVI.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCX.
DECEMBER, 1849.
Vol. LXVI.
The idea of associating history with some specific locality or institution, has long ago occurred to the skilful fabricators of romance. If old walls could speak, what strange secrets might they not reveal! The thought suggests itself spontaneously even to the mind of the boy; and though it is incapable of realisation, writers—good, bad, and indifferent—have seriously applied themselves to the task of extracting sermons from the stones, and have feigned to reproduce an audible voice from the vaults of the dreary ruin. Such was at least the primary idea of Scott, incomparably the greatest master of modern fiction, whilst preparing his materials for the construction of the Heart of Mid-Lothian . Victor Hugo has made the Cathedral of Paris the title and centre-point of his most stirring and animated tale. Harrison Ainsworth, who seems to think that the world can never have too much of a good thing, has assumed the office of historiographer of antiquity, and has treated us in succession to Chronicles of Windsor Castle, the Tower, and Old St Paul's. Those of the Bastile have lately been written by an author of no common power, whose modesty, rarely imitated in these days, has left us ignorant of his name; and we believe that it would be possible to augment the list to a considerable extent. In all those works, however, history was the subsidiary, while romance was the principal ingredient; we have now to deal with a book which professes to abstain from romance, though, in reality, no romance whatever has yet been constructed from materials of deeper interest. We allude, of course, to the work of Mr Francis; Mr Doubleday's treatise is of a graver and a sterner nature.