architecture, heraldic bearings, ancient military array, a tournament, a
royal hunt, a feast in the great hall at Kenilworth, a visit of state to
Warwick Castle, and the session of a baronial court. The ceremony of the
"voide," when the king took his spiced cup, is rehearsed with a painful
accumulation of particulars. For all this she consulted Leland's
"Collectanea," Warton's "History of English Poetry," the "Household Book
of Edward IV.," Pegge's "Dissertation on the Obsolete Office of Esquire
of the King's Body," the publications of the Society of Antiquaries and
similar authorities, with results that are infinitely tedious. Walter
Scott's archaeology is not always correct, nor his learning always
lightly borne; but, upon the whole, he had the art to make his cumbrous
materials contributory to his story rather than obstructive of it.

In these two novels we meet again all the familiar apparatus of secret
trap-doors, sliding panels, spiral staircases in the thickness of the
walls, subterranean vaults conducting to a neighboring priory or a cavern
in the forest, ranges of deserted apartments where the moon looks in
through mullioned casements, ruinous turrets around which the night winds
moan and howl. Here, too, once more are the wicked uncle who seizes upon
the estates of his deceased brother's wife, and keeps her and her
daughter shut up in his dungeon for the somewhat long period of eighteen
years; the heroine who touches her lute and sings in pensive mood, till
the notes steal to the ear of the young earl imprisoned in the adjacent
tower; the maiden who is carried off on horseback by bandits, till her
shrieks bring ready aid; the peasant lad who turns out to be the baron's
heir. "His surprise was great when the baroness, reviving, fixed her
eyes mournfully upon him and asked him to uncover his arm." Alas! the
surprise is not shared by the reader, when "'I have indeed found my
long-lost child: that strawberry,'"[27] etc., etc. "Gaston de
Blondville" has a ghost--not explained away in the end according to Mrs.