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land," ten persons have acquired a just idea of the feuds, so characteristic of these rude times, which, originating in a frivolous argument' over a cup of wine, continued for more than a century to nourish the bitterest enmity, and kindle the deadliest wars, throughout the Low Countries- if ten persons are now acquainted with this, for one who would have learnt, from more sober history, even the names of the Hoëks and the Kabblejaws, has not Grattan rendered, in aid of history, a valuable service ? And to those whom, as the world now is, the novelist only can reach. The value of the service, it will be replied, depends upon the accuracy of the portraiture. Most true. And it is no easy task, and no small merit, to attain to this species of accuracy. The historian, often doubtless at expense of much labour and perplexity, must make himself master of facts. The Historical Novelist must do more. He must search the records of former times for something beyond mere narrative details ; for the unrecorded spirit of the age. He must train his imagination to sojourn in the past, gradually to drink in the impressions that made men what we read that, centuries ago, they were ; until the fancy becomes imbued- saturated- with the influences of other times and climes. Then only may the novelist or the dramatist proceed, safely and successfully, to summon before us, in attractive succession, images of the past. Without such preparation the literary Glendowers of the age may " call spirits from the vasty deep " of the olden time for ever, and they will come not ; or, if they come, it will be a dwarfish, a spurious, and a short-lived race. Such failures indicate the difficulty, not the inutility, of the attempt. That which has been said applies, in one sense, with even greater force to the historical drama than to the romance. The one speaks to the ear, the other to the eye ; the one is but the text to the painting, the other isthe painting itself. The drama, then, with all the drawbacks incidental to its peculiar structure, is yet one step nearer to reality, than the novel. And when the dramatist is fortunate enough to obtain the aid of some of the master-spirits of the stage, how important is that one step nearer ! Nearer, shall we say ? Who, when SIDDONS Stood before him, the living type- more than Imagination's type of the regal Catherine-what charmed spectator, when her searching tones startled the very depths of the soul, ever paused to remember, that it was not the Queen of England, but only the daughter of Roger Kemble who spoke ? If the boards of old Drury had actually been Blackfriars Hall ; if