It is, indeed, to be doubted that a novelist can so reproduce a distant
epoch as to satisfy the ideas of careful historical students. He can,
however, make familiar to his readers the general spirit of a time.
And, in this, Scott was eminently successful. "Kenilworth" gives a
vivid picture of the gay picturesqueness of Elizabeth's age.
"Woodstock" contains a fine contrast between the Cavalier and the
Puritan character. "Quentin Durward" affords a lasting impression of
the times of Louis XI and Charles the Bold. Scott's strong national
feeling and his intense sympathy with the traditions of his native land
naturally gave to his Scotch fictions a particular historical value.
"The Legend of Montrose," describing the civil war in the sixteenth
century; "Old Mortality," dealing with the rebellion of the
Covenanters; and "Waverley," occupied with the Pretender's troubles in
the middle of the eighteenth century, threw into bold relief widely
differing periods of Scotch history. Its is, indeed, extraordinary that
one mind should have been able to seize so many and so varied
historical conditions as are treated in the Waverley novels. Of these
works, about fourteen deal with entirely distinct epochs, each one of
which is given its individual character and obtains its appropriate
treatment.[211]

Bulwer Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii," and "Harold, the Last of the
Saxon Kings," are both powerful, ingenious, and interesting narratives,
and they give as definite an idea, perhaps, of the times of which they
treat as is possible after so long a lapse of time. "Rienzi" leaves a
greater impression of verisimilitude. "The Last of the Barons" is
somewhat clogged by its superabundance of historic incident, but still
affords a striking view of declining feudalism. In the "Tale of Two
Cities" and "Barnaby Rudge," Dickens described the sanguinary scenes of
the French Revolution and the Lord Gordon Riots with his never-failing