picture of a time long gone by"?

Is it _Ivanhoe_?--a gay and beautiful romance, no doubt; but surely,
as the late Mr. Freeman was at pains to point out, not a "lifelike and
truthful picture" of any age that ever was. Is it _Old Mortality_?
Well, but even if we here get something more like a "vigorous,
lifelike, and truthful picture of a time gone by," we are bound to
consider the scale of the two books. Size counts, as Aristotle pointed
out, and as we usually forget. It is the whole of Western Europe that
Reade reconstructs for the groundwork of his simple story.

Mr. Besant might have said more. He might have pointed out that no
novel of Scott's approaches the _Cloister_ in lofty humanity, in
sublimity of pathos. The last fifty pages of the tale reach an
elevation of feeling that Scott never touched or dreamed of touching.
And the sentiment is sane and honest, too: the author reaches to the
height of his great argument easily and without strain. It seems to me
that, as an appeal to the feelings, the page that tells of Margaret's
death is the finest thing in fiction. It appeals for a score of
reasons, and each reason is a noble one. We have brought together in
that page extreme love, self-sacrifice, resignation, courage,
religious feeling: we have the end of a beautiful love-tale, the end
of a good woman, and the last earthly trial of a good man. And with
all this, there is no vulgarization of sacred ground, no cheap parade
of the heart's secrets; but a deep sobriety relieved with the most
delicate humor. Moreover, the language is Charles Reade's at its
best--which is almost as good as at its worst it is abominable.

That Scott could never reach the emotional height of Margaret's
death-scene, or of the scene in Clement's cave, is certain. Moreover