ommingled in the dance with volumed wigs and
far-extending hoops,--if in the portraiture of real character the truth
of
history be violated, the eyes of the spectator are necessarily averted
from a picture which excites in every well regulated and intelligent
mind the hatred of incredulity. We have neither time nor inclination to
enforce our remark by giving illustrations of it. But if those
unpardonable sins against good taste can be avoided, and the features of
an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once
faithful and striking, the very opposite is the legitimate conclusion:
the composition itself is in every point of view dignified and improved;
and the author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a
careless observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the
bench of the historians of his time and country. In this proud assembly,
and in no mean place of it, we are disposed to rank the author of these
works; for we again express our conviction--and we desire to be
understood to use the term as distinguished from _knowledge_--that they
are all the offspring of the same parent. At once a master of the great
events and minuter incidents of history, and of the manners of the times
he celebrates, as distinguished from those which now prevail,--the
intimate thus of the living and of the dead, his judgment enables him to
separate those traits which are characteristic from those that are
generic; and his imagination, not less accurate and discriminating than
vigorous and vivid, presents to the mind of the reader the manners of
the times, and introduces to his familiar acquaintance the individuals
of his drama as they thought and spoke and acted. We are not quite sure
that any thing is to be found in the manner and character of the Black
Dwarf which would enable us, without the aid of the author's
information, and the facts he relates, to give it to the beginning of
the last century; and, as we have already remarked, his free-booting
robber lives, perhaps, too late in time. But his delineation is perfect.
With palpable and inexcusable defects in the _denouement_, there are
scenes of deep and overwhelming interest; and every one, we think, must
be delighted with the portrait of the Grandmother of Hobbie Elliott, a
representation soothing and consoling in itself, and heightened in its
effect by the contrast produced from the lighter manners of the younger
members of the family, and