at accomplishments, courage, eloquence, subtlety, and
achievement gained him the sobriquet of "The Admirable." The chief
scenes are laid in Paris at the time of Catherine de' Medici's rule and
Henry III.'s reign, when the air was full of intrigue and conspiracy,
and when religious quarrels were not more bitter and dangerous than
political wrangles. The inscrutable king, the devout Queen Louise of
Lorraine, the scheming queen-mother, and Marguerite of Valois, half
saint, half profligate, a pearl of beauty and grace; Henry of Navarre,
ready to buy his Paris with sword or mass; well-known great nobles,
priests, astrologers, learned doctors, foreign potentates, ambassadors,
pilgrims, and poisoners,--pass before the reader's eye. The pictures of
student life, at a time when all the world swarmed to the great schools
of Paris, serve to explain the hero and the period.

[Illustration: W. HARRISON AINSWORTH]

When, in 1839, Dickens resigned the editorship of Bentley's Miscellany,
Ainsworth succeeded him. "The new whip," wrote the old one afterward,
"having mounted the box, drove straight to Newgate. He there took in
Jack Sheppard, and Cruikshank the artist; and aided by that very vulgar
but very wonderful draughtsman, he made an effective story of the
burglar's and housebreaker's life." Everybody read the story, and most
persons cried out against so ignoble a hero, so mean a history, and so
misdirected a literary energy. The author himself seems not to have been
proud of the success which sold thousands of copies of an unworthy book,
and placed a dramatic version of its vulgar adventures on the stage of
eight theatres at once. He turned his back on this profitable field to
produce, in rapid succession, 'Guy Fawkes,' a tale of the famous
Gunpowder Plot; 'The Tower of London,' a story of the Princess
Elizabeth, the reign of Queen Mary, and the melancholy episode of Lady
Jane Grey's brief glory; 'Old Saint Paul,' a story of the time of
Charles II., which contains the history of the Plague and of the Great
Fire; 'The Miser's Daughter'; 'Windsor Castle,' whose chief characters
are Katharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry the
Eighth; 'St. James,' a tale of the court of Queen Anne; 'The Lancashire
Witches'; 'The Star-Chamber,' a historical story of the time of Charles
I.; 'The Constable of the Tower'; 'The Lord Mayor of London'; 'Cardinal
Pole,' which deals with the court and times of Philip and Mary; 'John
Law,'