to the lives really moulded by large and specific causes, for enjoyment, and leave the small gossip of the company at the Wells as, relatively at least, a failure.

And it is well for all the world that it was so.

The domestic novel, when really of the highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an unfailing source of amusement; but it has nothing of the tonic influence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating intellectual air, of Scott's historic tales.

Even when Scott is farthest from reality--as in _Ivanhoe_ or _The Monastery_--he makes you open your eyes to all sorts of historical conditions to which you would otherwise be blind.

The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect, gives little but pleasure at the best; at the worst it is simply scandal idealized.
Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes.