application, underlie Human Conduct, and are common to all ages
alike. Given a fairly accurate knowledge as regards the general
history of any period, combined with some investigation into its
special manners and customs, there is no reason why a truly
imaginative novelist should not produce a work at once satisfying
to romantic and historical instincts.

Again, if it be true that the novelist cannot reproduce the far
past in any strict sense, it is also true that neither can he so
reproduce the life and events of yesterday. That power of
imaginative memory, which all exercise in daily experience, may be
held in very different degrees, but its enjoyment is not dependent
on accuracy of representation--for, were this so, none of us would
possess it. In an analogous manner the writer of Romance may be
more or less adequately equipped on the side of History pure and
simple, but he need not wait for that which will never come--the
power of reproducing in toto a past age. If, in reading what
purports to be no more than a Novel, the struggle between
Christianity and Paganism (for example), or the unbounded egotism
of Napoleon, be brought more vividly before our minds--and this may
be done by suggestion as well as by exact relation, then, I would
maintain, we are to some extent educated historically, using the
word in a large though perfectly legitimate sense.

I recently read a work which here presents itself as admirably
illustrating my meaning. In her too little known "Adventures of a
Goldsmith" Miss M. H. Bourchier has contrived to bring forcibly
before us the period when Napoleon, fast approaching the zenith of
his power, was known in France as the "First Consul." The "man of
destiny" himself--appearing on the scene for little more than a