In the third place, there is no ingenuity in the plot of the Ancient Régime. You see, at once, not only how all is to end, but you penetrate into every detail of the plot. By the time you have read thirty pages, you know that Annette is not Pierre Morin’s daughter—that the Abbé is the unknown companion of the murderers—that Pierre Morin is the person who warns Castelneau to leave Paris—and that the sign which induces the Abbé to obey, is the discovery of his own seal, which had been lost at the door of Fiteau’s shop, impressed on the letter of warning. A plot, so loosely contrived, wants interest; and if you go through the book at all, it is with labor.
But even that very respectable gentleman, who unfortunately is provided with a tail, is not, according to the popular rumour, without his good qualities; and Mr. James, despite all we have said, is yet a writer of talent—talent running a muck, we contend—but still talent. More than this—he is a historian; not a mere chronicler, but a historian. He knows the manners, costume, and general spirit of the ages of which he writes, and his novels may, so far forth as they embody this knowledge, be read with interest. This, too, is the secret of his continued success in despite of his many faults. This, too, is why he is called the great historical novelist of the age, though in painting accurately the characters of his leading personages, such as Richelieu, Philip Augustus, &c., he is far beneath Grattan—a writer, by the bye, less known in this country than he deserves to be. In another thing James is deficient as a writer of historical romance—he does not enter, as fully as he ought, into _the spirit of the age_. Here Bulwer, in his Rienzi, has shown himself superior to the author of Richelieu; to say nothing of Scott, who, whatever license he took with particular personages, always depicted vividly the spirit of the age of which he wrote.
We take leave of this novel with a brief prophesy respecting its author: he will, in fifty years, be of no more note than any one of the thousand and one _imitators_ of whose class he is the head.
_America, Historical, Statistical and Descriptive: with numerous engravings. By_ J. Silk Buckingham. _2 vols. Harper and Brothers._