They are entitled “Tales of my Landlord”:  why so entitled, excepting to introduce a quotation from Don Quixote, it is difficult to conceive:  for Tales of my Landlord they are not, nor is it indeed easy to say whose tales they ought to be called.  There is a proem, as it is termed, supposed to be written by Jedediah Cleishbotham, the schoolmaster and parish clerk of the village of Gandercleugh, in which we are given to understand that these Tales were compiled by his deceased usher, Mr. Peter Pattieson, from the narratives or conversations of such travellers as frequented the Wallace Inn, in that village.  Of this proem we shall only say that it is written in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his Pastorals, being, as Johnson terms it, “such imitation as he could obtain of obsolete language, and by consequence in a style that was never written nor spoken in any age or place.”

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We have given these details partly in compliance with the established rules which our office prescribes, and partly in the hope that the authorities we have been enabled to bring together might give additional light and interest to the story.  From the unprecedented popularity of the work, we cannot flatter ourselves that our summary has made any one of our readers acquainted with events with which he was not previously familiar.  The causes of that popularity we may be permitted shortly to allude to; we cannot even hope to exhaust them, and it is the less necessary that we should attempt it, since we cannot suggest a consideration which a perusal of the work has not anticipated in the minds of all our readers.

One great source of the universal admiration which this family of Novels has attracted, is their peculiar plan, and the distinguished excellence with which it has been executed.  The objections that have frequently been stated against what are called Historical Romances, have been suggested, we think, rather from observing the universal failure of that species of composition, than from any inherent and constitutional defect in the species of composition itself.  If the manners of different ages are injudiciously blended together,—­if unpowdered crops and slim and fairy shapes are commingled in the dance with volumed wigs and far-extending hoops,—­if in the portraiture of real character the truth of history be violated, the eyes of the spectator are necessarily averted from a picture which excites in every well regulated and intelligent mind the hatred of incredulity.  We have neither time nor inclination to enforce our remark by giving illustrations of it.  But if those unpardonable sins against good taste can be avoided, and the features of an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking, the very opposite is the legitimate conclusion:  the composition itself is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom