shows Galt's peculiar talent. It is shown better still in his next
published work, _The Annals of the Parish_, which is said to have been
written long before, and in the pre-Waverley days to have been rejected
by the publishers because "_Scotch_ novels could not pay." It is not
exactly a novel, being literally what its title holds out--the annals of
a Western Parish by its minister, the Rev. Mr. Balwhidder, a
Presbyterian Parson Adams of a less robust type, whose description of
himself and parishioners is always good, and at times charming. _Sir
Andrew Wylie_ (a fantastic book of much good fun and much good feeling),
_The Entail_, and _The Provost_ (the last two sometimes ranked next to
the _Annals_), followed rapidly, and are all good in a way which has
been oddly revived of late years by some of our most popular novelists.
A better writer than Galt, though a less fertile, was Dr. Moir
("Delta"), another _Blackwood_ man, whose chief single performance is
_Mansie Wauch_, but who wrote both prose and verse, both tales and
essays, with considerable accomplishment of style, and with a very
agreeable mixture of serious and comic power.

Meanwhile, the historical novel did not by any means absorb the
attention of the crowds of aspirants who hurried to try their fortune in
the wake of Scott. Lady Morgan (or rather Miss Sydney Owenson) did, in
_The Wild Irish Girl_ (1806) and other things, some "rattling Hibernian
stories" quite early; John Banim (1798-1842) coincided with the two
Englishmen and exceeded them in _gout du terroir_; and the _Fairy
Legends_ (1826) of Crofton Croker (1798-1854) are at their best simply
exquisite. But the older styles continued after a fashion, or underwent
slight changes, before the novel of purely ordinary life, on a plan
midway between Scott and Miss Austen, triumphed in the middle of the
century. One of the most popular of novelists in the reigns of George
IV. and William IV. was Theodore Hook (1788-1841), a man of respectable
connections and excellent education, who, having made himself a
favourite with the Regent and many persons of quality as a diner-out and
improvisatore, received a valuable appointment at the Mauritius, laid
himself open by carelessness to a prosecution for malversation, and,
returning to England, never entirely escaped from the effects of this,
though he was extremely successful both as a novelist, and as a
newspaper writer and editor, in the _John Bull_ chiefly. Some of H