[42] "Racine et Shakespeare."

[43] "Don Quixote."

[44] "Sir Walter Scott."

[45] "Dix ans d'études historiques": preface.

[46] Walter Bagehot says that "Ivanhoe" "describes the Middle Ages as we
should have wished them to be," ignoring their discomforts and harsh
barbarism. "Every boy has heard of tournaments and has a firm persuasion
that in an age of tournaments life was thoroughly well understood. A
martial society where men fought hand to hand on good horses with large
lances," etc. ("The Waverley Novels").

[47] "Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely. . . .
I do not think there is a single study in all his romances of what may be
fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual character" (R. H. Hutton: "Sir
Walter Scott," p. 126).

[48] "Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink to dust, with all its
absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is
in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always
find believers." ("Diary" for 1829).

[49] See vol. i., p. 42. "We almost envy the credulity of those who in
the gentle moonlight of a summer night in England, amid the tangled
glades of a deep forest, or the turfy swell of her romantic commons,
could fancy they saw the fairies tracing their sportive ring. But it is
in vain to regret illusions which, however engaging, must of necessity