What Are Historical Novels?

An atmosphere can be as historicai as an occurrence, says Paul Leicester Ford in the December Atlantic, and a created cnaracter can transmit a truer sense of a generation than the most labored biography of some actual person. It is scarcely possible to obtain a more vivid idea of the eighteenth century life and people than is to be found in Fielding's "Torn Jones." and in this sense it is the best of historical flction. In the three volumes of the Littlepage MSS. Cooper took as his central theme the history of the great land grants of New York; Satanstoe relates the motives of state which Induced the granting of the patents, the means taken to secure them, flnally the struggle with the ïndians for their possession; "The Chainbearer" carries the history one point further by showing the method of telling of these land grants, and tells of the struggle for possession between the owners and the squatters, and finally the thlrd of the series, "The Redskins," deals with the flerce "anti-rent" war which broke out on the sanie estates some flfty years later. It Is apparent, therefore, that these three books are historical novele. But, as a fact, they are not more truly historical than the early works of Bret Harte, and it is a safe assertion to make that if the day ever comes when his stories of California are no loñger held to be the classics of the west, they will stlll be read as pictures of the upbuilding of the Sierra states, or as historical