st to defy its identification
with history. Scenes, situations, and sketches, of uncommon interest,
abound throughout the work; the manners and customs of the times, and
the details of costume and pageant glitter are worked up with great
labour--perhaps with more than is looked for or will be appreciated in
a novel. Still, they are creditable to the taste and research of the
author. Occasionally, there are scenes of bold and stirring interest,
just such as might be expected from an actor of Mr. Power's vivid
stamp. The storm sketches towards the close of the second volume are
even infinitely better than any of John Kemble's shilling waves or
Mr. Farley's last scenes. In other portions of the work, bits of
antiquarianism are so _stuck on_ the pages as to perplex, rather
than aid the descriptions, by their technicality. Here and there too
the tinsel is unsparingly sprinkled.

Nevertheless, there is a vividness--a freshness--and altogether a
superior interest, in all the details which must render "The King's
Secret" a favourite work with the fiction-and-fact-reading public.
The scenes are so complicated in their interest, that it is scarcely
possible to detach an extract.

In the early part of the first volume occurs a passage relative to the
resistance of the people of Ghent to the oppression of their rulers,
which smacks strongly of the enthusiasm of liberty.

"Whilst impelled on the one hand by the strong desire to regulate
the arbitrary and oppressive exactions, which cramped their energies
and held them for ever at the mercy of their despot's caprice, and
restrained on the other hand by their habitual reverence for their
feudal princes. Artevelde stepped forth, and in their startled ears
pronounced the word "_Resist!_" His eloquence was well seconded by
the grasping severity of a needy and extravagant court, until gradually
combining their wrath and intelligence with the energies of the populace
jealous of their rights, the merchants and citizens of the cities of
Flanders rose upon the bears and butterflies who infested and robbed
them, and, thrusting them forth, set modern Europe the first fearful
example of a people's strength, and the rottenness of the wooden gods
for whom they laboured. Whilst princes, on their parts, learned a lesson
they have not since forgotten or ever ceased to practise, and combining
their hosts of slaves, lashed them onward to scare this stranger,
Freedom, from the earth, even as in our t