prefer the silence of
night. A few cannot write save when surrounded by books, pictures and
luxurious furniture, while some must have a bare room with nothing in
it to distract attention. Mr. Charles Major wrote When Knighthood was
in Flower on Sunday afternoons, the only time he had free from the
exactions of the law. He was full of his subject, however, and
doubtless his clients paid the charges in the way of losses through
demurrers neglected and motions and exceptions not properly presented!

One thing about Mr. Major's work deserves special mention; its shows
conscientious mastery of details, a sure evidence of patient study.
What it may lack as literature is compensated for in lawful coin of
human interest and in general truthfulness to the facts and the
atmosphere of the life he depicts. When asked how he arrived at his
accurate knowledge of old London--London in the time of Henry VIII--he
fetched an old book--Stow's Survey of London--from his library and
said:

"You remember in my novel that Mary goes one night from Bridewell
Castle to Billingsgate Ward through strange streets and alleys. Well,
that journey I made with Mary, aided by Stow's Survey, with his map
of old London before me."

It is no contradiction of terms to speak of fiction as authentic. Mere
vraisemblance is all very well in works of pure imagination; but a
historical romance does not satisfy the reader's sense of justice
unless its setting and background and atmosphere are true to time,
place and historical facts. Mr. Major felt the demand of his
undertaking and respected it. He collected old books treating of
English life and manners in the reign of Henry VIII, preferring to
saturate his mind with what writers nearest the time had to say,
rather than depend upon recent historians. In this he chose well, for
the romancer's art, different from the historian's, needs the literary
shades and colors of the period it would portray.

Another clever choice on the part of our author was to put the telling
of the story in the mouth of his heroine's contemporary. This, of
course, had often been done by romancers before Mr. Major, but he
chose well, nevertheless. Fine literary finish was not to be expected
of a Master of the Dance early in the sixteenth century; so that Sir
Edwin Caskoden, and not Mr. Major, is accepted by the reader as
responsible for the book's narrative, descriptive and dramatic style.
This ruse, so to call it, serves a double pur