e, and the whole of recorded time
offers them, more than half ready for use, in something like the same
condition as those patterns of work which ladies buy, fill up, and
regard as their own. To make an historical novel of the very highest
class, such as the best of Scott and Thackeray, requires of course very
much more than this--to make one of all but the highest class, such as
_Les Trois Mousquetaires_, requires much more. But that "tolerable
pastime," which it is the business of the average novelist to supply at
the demand of the average reader, can perhaps be attained more easily,
more abundantly, and with better prospect of average satisfaction in the
historical way than in any other.

[Sidenote: Other kinds and classes.]

[Sidenote: The Novel of Romanticism generally.]

It would, however, of course be an intolerable absurdity to rest the
claims of the French novel of 1825 to 1850 wholly--it would be somewhat
absurd to rest them mainly--on its performances in this single kind. It
found out, continued, or improved many others; and perhaps most of its
greatest achievements were in these others. In fact "others" is an
incorrect or at least an inexact term; for the historic novel itself is
only a subdivision or offshoot of the great literary revolution which we
call Romanticism. Indeed the entire novel of the nineteenth century,
misapprehend the fact as people may, is in fact Romantic, from the first
novel of Chateaubriand to the last of Zola, though the Romanticism is
chequered and to a certain extent warped by that invincible French
determination towards "Rule" which has vindicated itself so often, and
on which shortly we may have to make something almost like an excursus.
But this very fact, if nothing else, would make a discussion of the
Romantic novel as such out of place _here_; it will have to come, to
some extent at any rate, in the Conclusion itself. Only for the present
need it be said, without quite the same danger of meeting with scornful
or indignant protest, that all the books hitherto discussed from _Rene_
to _Dominique_, from _Le Solitaire_ to _Monte Cristo_--even the work of
Merimee and Sainte-Beuve, those celebrated "apostates" as some would
have them to be--is really Romantic. It may follow the more poetical
romanticism of Nodier and Hugo, of Gautier and Gerard; the historical
romanticism of Vigny and Merimee; the individualism and analysis of
Beyle and his disciples; the supernaturalism of George