Ringan Gilhaize
Ringan Gilhaize
or The Covenanters
Book Excerpt
ve passages, of which it is noticeable how many are nocturnal or crepuscular, or paint effects of mist or rain-cloud--these might serve as models, at once in their breadth of execution, their aptness and their pregnancy, or quality of moral suggestiveness, of what descriptions in literature should be. How different from those laboured outlines, laboriously filled in, of such a piece of writing as La Curée!
So much, then, for the divergence of the two authors; and now as to their relationship. It is, perhaps, in their power of putting their sense of a multitude before the reader, of exhibiting the passions by which that multitude is animated, and of tracing the phases and fluctuations of that passion, that the Frenchman or Italian and the Scot come first and most strikingly together. Witness in this book the scene of the advance of the congregations to the trial of the Ministers, or that of the return of the Reformer, Knox, to Scotland. This of itself, however, is not much; nor should we
Editor's choice
(view all)Popular books in History, Fiction and Literature
Readers reviews
0.0
LoginSign up
Be the first to review this book