am just in your position, Ottmar," said Vincenz. "'Guy Mannering' is
the only work of Scott's which I have read. But I was much struck by
the originality of it, and the manner in which, in its methodical
progress, it gradually unwinds itself like a clue of thread, gently and
quietly, never breaking its firm-spun strands. My chief objection to it
is, that (no doubt in faithfulness to British manners) the female
characters are so tame and colourless, except that grand gipsy
woman--although she is scarcely so much to be called a woman as a kind
of spectral apparition. Both of the young ladies in 'Guy Mannering'
remind me of the English coloured engravings, which are all exactly
alike--_id est_, as pretty as they are meaningless and expressionless,
and as to which one sees distinctly that the originals of them would
never allow anything further than 'Yea, yea; nay, nay!' to cross those
pretty little delicate lips of theirs, as anything more might lead unto
evil. Hogarth's milkmaid is a prototype of all these creatures. Both of
the girls in 'Guy Mannering' lack reality--the god-like vivifying
breath of life."

"Might not one wish," said Theodore, "in the case of some of the female
characters of one of our most talented writers (particularly in some of
his earlier works) that they had a little more flesh and blood, since
they are really all so very apt to melt into wreaths of mist when one
looks at them closely? Nevertheless, let us love and honour both of
those writers--the foreigner and our countryman, because of the true
and glorious things which they have bestowed upon us."

"It is remarkable," said Sylvester, "that--unless I mistake--another
great writer appeared on the other side of the channel, about the same
time as Walter Scott, and has produced works of equal greatness and
splendour, but in a different direction. I mean Lord Byron, who appears
to me to be much more solid and powerful than Thomas Moore. His 'Siege
of Corinth' is a masterpiece, fall of genius. His predominant tendency
seems to be towards the gloomy, the mysterious and the terrible; and
his 'Vampire' I have avoided reading, for the bare idea of a vampire
makes my blood run cold. So far as I understand the matter, a vampire
is an animated corpse which sucks the blood of the living."

"Ho! ho!" cried Lothair, laughing, "a writer such as you, my dear
friend, Sylvester, must of course have found it necessary to dip more
or less deeply into all kinds of