But facts are never a real excuse for the morally incredible, or all but incredible, in fiction.

On the wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous to dilate.

As in Shakspeare, there is not even a minor person but lives and is of flesh and blood, if we except, perhaps, Dousterswivel and Sir Arthur Wardour.

Sir Arthur is only Sir Robert Hazlewood over again, with a slightly different folly and a somewhat more amiable nature.

Lovel's place, as usual, is among the shades of heroes, and his love-affair is far less moving, far more summarily treated, than that of Jenny Caxon.
The skilful contrasts are perhaps most remarkable when we compare Elspeth of the Burnfoot with the gossiping old women in the post-office at Fairport,--a town studied perhaps from Arbroath.