This is
what we mean by saying, as we have said above, that Galt has in this
romance laid bare the soul of the Covenanting movement. And this, we may
add, is what Scott in _Old Mortality_ most signally failed to do. For in
that novel--in place of Galt's subtle and penetrating analysis of the
motives which animated the Covenanters nobly to dare and nobly to
endure--we find the author content himself with using the
characteristics and the disturbances of the time for the mere purpose of
providing incident and adventure, and a strong local colour for his
puppets--in a word, for the most ordinary and conventional purposes of
the romantic novelist. Nor is this the only instance of such
psychological obtuseness in his work. That, in spite of this initial and
damning defect, he does succeed in producing a fine novel, is but one
more proof of the amazing fecundity of his genius. None the less does
the fact remain that it is a novel, so to speak, without a soul--that,
so far from being of the essence of the Covenant, the Burleys,
Mucklewraths, Mauses and Macbrairs are but so many of its accidents, and
that thus the main issues of the historical drama are not involved in
the romance. In other words, it is as though the tragedy of _Hamlet_
had been performed with great skill and _eclat_, only without the
appearance of the Prince of Denmark upon the stage. And thus, if the
historical novel is to play a part of any dignity in our literature, we
may safely predict that it is upon the stock here supplied by Galt,
rather than upon that supplied by Scott in _Old Mortality_, that it will
have to be grafted.

Having now assigned to our author the credit due to him for his choice
and general treatment of a fine subject, it remains to touch briefly
upon the technical skill which he has brought to bear upon the handling
of its details. By resorting, then, to an ingenious and yet perfectly
natural and legitimate device, he has contrived to extend his "household
memorial" (for it is thus that he describes the story) so as to make it
embrace the entire period of the religious struggle--from its inception
under the regency of Marie of Lorraine to its close, or practical close,
under the rule of the enlightened and tolerant William of Orange,--a
period in all of full one hundred and thirty years. For the narrative,
opening with the martyrdom of Walter Mill at St Andrews in 1558, is
continued to the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689. A