"'Dear Cousin,' replied Henry, 'it must be only then by those who do not know you; for to me you appear the humblest creature in the world.'
"'Do you really think so?'
"'I am certain of it; or would you always give up your opinion to that of persons in a superior state, however inferior in their understanding? ... I have more pride than you, for I will never stoop to act or to speak contrary to my feelings.'"
William rises to eminence, in time becoming a judge. Henry, who is always virtuous, can obtain no preferment. This contrast in the two cousins is not so overdrawn as at first appears. William represents the aristocracy of the old world; Henry, the free representative of a new country.
A tragic story runs through the novel, which becomes intensely dramatic at the point where William puts on his black cap to pronounce sentence on the girl whom he had ruined years before. He does not recognise her; but she, who had loved him through the years, becomes insane, not at the thought of death, but that he should be the one to pronounce the sentence. It is doubtful if any novelist before Scott had produced so thrilling a situation, a situation which grew naturally out of the plot, and the anguish of the poor unfortunate Agnes has the realism of Thomas Hardy or Tolstoi.
Only by reading these old novels can one comprehend the change produced in England by the next half-century. The teachings of Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Inchbald were declared dangerous to the state. That they taught disrespect for authority, was one of the many charges brought against them. Yet with what ladylike reserve they advance views which a later generation applauded when boldly proclaimed by Dickens, Thackeray, and Disraeli!