made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful
features--the mouth with a suggestion of wild boars' tusks behind
it, the beard which could bristle with fury: the whole man and his
life-history are revealed in that picture. I wonder if Scott had
ever seen the original which hangs at the Hepburn family seat?

Personally, I have always had a very high opinion of a novel which
the critics have used somewhat harshly, and which came almost the
last from his tired pen. I mean "Count Robert of Paris." I am
convinced that if it had been the first, instead of the last, of
the series it would have attracted as much attention as "Waverley."
I can understand the state of mind of the expert, who cried out in
mingled admiration and despair: "I have studied the conditions of
Byzantine Society all my life, and here comes a Scotch lawyer who
makes the whole thing clear to me in a flash!" Many men could draw
with more or less success Norman England, or mediaeval France, but
to reconstruct a whole dead civilization in so plausible a way, with
such dignity and such minuteness of detail, is, I should think,
a most wonderful tour de force. His failing health showed itself
before the end of the novel, but had the latter half equalled the
first, and contained scenes of such humour as Anna Comnena reading
aloud her father's exploits, or of such majesty as the account of
the muster of the Crusaders upon the shores of the Bosphorus, then
the book could not have been gainsaid its rightful place in the very
front rank of the novels.

I would that he had carried on his narrative, and given us a glimpse
of the actual progress of the First Crusade. What an incident! Was
ever anything in the world's history like it? It had what historical
incidents seldom have, a definite beginning, middle and end, from