This is the best romance we have read since the days of Sir Walter Scott. The scene in which it is laid is new to the English reader, and there is in the portraiture of its principal characters all the freshness of originality. We doubt if any one, even the most hackneyed of novel and romance readers, can venture upon perusing the first chapter, without feeling deeply interested in the progress of the tale, and anxious to proceed with it to its close. In the perusal of this romance, there is the conviction that the plot, which makes the work a romance, is the only thing that takes it out of the range of history; for its incidents are facts to which only new names are given. Its portraiture of manners and of classes as they exist in Servia is as correct as that given of England in the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion, in Ivanhoe. Thus forewarned that a new and eventful period in the history of a strange country and an extraordinary people is embodied in this romance, the public is invited to its perusal. We can assure them that it will be found well worthy of their attention, and our only regret is, that we cannot spare space for even a single extract from this truly affecting and interesting romance.—Morning Herald.
One of the finest, most powerful, most truthful romance of the age.—The Naval and Military Gazette.
The great act of the opening is intensely striking, and colours all the future.... There is general simplicity. No effort to be fine, or sentimental, or pathetic. The 'Forest and the Fortress' a genuinely good historical novel, and does infinite credit to a female pen. We recommend it as one of the best of its order: keeping close to the realities and truths of history, and most ingeniously and skilfully impregnated with inventive charms, to render those realities and truths, dramatically popular.—Literary Gazette.
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In Three Vols. 8vo., price 31s. 6d.,
RIZZIO.
EDITED By G. P. R. JAMES, Esq.
We have read it with a pleasure in which method and reason have as much share as imagination. It is more readable than ninety-nine hundredths of so called historical novels.—Athenæum.
The author must have read a great deal to enable him to acquire the information, paint the portraits, dress up individual traditions in the clever fashion he has reached in his "Rizzio"—the volumes are, in every respect, curiosities of literature.—Literary Gazette.
A most valuable and interesting publication, valuable to the scholar, who is well acquainted with the history of the times of which it treats, and interesting to all who read merely for amusement.—Morning Herald.