circumstances in the incompleteness and obscurity in which they often
present themselves to the senses of a single person; he tells just what
that person could have perceived, and leaves the sketch to be finished
by his reader. Thus, when Porteous is hurried away to execution, we
attend his ruthless conductors, but we wait not to witness the last
details, but flee with Butler from the scene of death, and looking back
from afar, see through the lurid glare of torches a human figure
dangling in the air--and the whole scene is more present to our minds,
than if every successive incident had been regularly unfolded. Thus,
when Ravenswood and his horse vanish from the sight of Colonel Ashton,
we feel how the impressiveness and beauty of the description are
heightened by placing us where the latter stood,--showing us no more
than he could have witnessed, and bidding our imaginations to fill up
the awful doubtful chasm.

That the Author of Waverley is a master of the pathetic, is evinced by
several well-known passages. Such are the funeral of the fisherman's son
in the Antiquary--the imprisonment and trial of Effie Deans, and the
demeanour of the sister and the broken-hearted father--the short
narrative of the smuggler in Redgauntlet--many parts of Kenilworth--and
of that finest of tragic tales, the Bride of Lammermoor.

_Plots._

The plots in the Waverley Novels generally display much ingenuity, and
are interestingly involved; but there is not one in the conduct of which
it would not be easy to point out a blemish. None have that completeness
which constitutes one of the chief merits of Fielding's Tom Jones. There
is always either an improbability, or a forced expedient, or an
incongruous incident, or an unpleasant break, or too much intricacy, or