_Scenic Description_.

Good as are the descriptions of quiescent objects, it is in his
treatment of events,--of the visible operations of man, or of the
elements,--that the author displays most power. What have we finer of
its kind, than the storm in the Antiquary? The sullen sunset--the
advancing tide--the rocks half hidden by the rising foam--the marks of
promised safety fading from sight, and with them the hope they
nourished--the ledge which the sufferers gained with difficulty--on the
one side, a raging sea, and on the other, a barrier that forbade
retreat! Guy Mannering contains another masterpiece--the night attack of
Portanferry, witnessed by Bertram. We feel as though we were that
person--we see and hear all of which his eyes and ears had cognizance;
and the impression is the more strong, because the writer has told only
_that_, and left the rest to our imagination. This illustrates one
feature of the author's skill. He knows the effect producible by leaving
circumstances in the incompleteness and obscurity in which they often
present themselves to the senses of a single person; he tells just what
that person could have perceived, and leaves the sketch to be finished
by his reader. Thus, when Porteous is hurried away to execution, we
attend his ruthless conductors, but we wait not to witness the last
details, but flee with Butler from the scene of death, and looking back
from afar, see through the lurid glare of torches a human figure
dangling in the air--and the whole scene is more present to our minds,
than if every successive incident had been regularly unfolded. Thus,
when Ravenswood and his horse vanish from the sight of Colonel Ashton,
we feel how the impressiveness and beauty of the description are
heightened by placing us where the latter stood,--showing us no more
than he could have witnessed, and bidding our imaginations to fill up
the awful doubtful chasm.

That the Author of Waverley is a master of the pathetic, is evinced by
several well-known passages. Such are the funeral of the fisherman's son
in the Antiquary--the imprisonment and trial of Effie Deans, and the
demeanour of the sister and the broken-hearted father--the short
narrative of the smuggler in Redgauntlet--many parts of Kenilworth--and
of that finest of tragic tales, the Bride of Lammermoor.

_Plots._

The plots in the Waverley Novels generally display much ingenuity, and
are interestingly involved; but there is not one in the