Old Saint Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire "By far the best of Mr. Ainsworth's works; it is carefully written; the interest of the story is maintained throughout; many of the scenes are fraught with pathos and replete with incident, while his characters are portrayed with a graphic power and faithfulness which brings before the mind's eye the daily occurrences of that dreaded epoch of our history. Mr. Ainsworth has invested our time-honored edifices - the Tower, St. Paul's, and the old houses of Parliament with that individualizing interest which, before his advent to the domain of romantic fiction, was the sold and undisputed field of the great magician. The historical romances of Sir Walter Scott led thousands of minds, to whom political history had been an ungenial and distasteful line of reading, to renew and improve their acquaintance with the personages and events of the momentous eras depicted in his novels - a study, in fact of the chronicles of their country. In Mr. Ainsworth's 'Tower of London,' the early years of Elizabeth, the reign of Bloody Mary, and the romantic, melancholy episode of Lady Jane Grey, a period of which, up to the publication of this chronicle of the Tower, we had but a hazy, imperfect notion, are as familiar to us as the latter years of the same sovereign, and the times of James I. "To emulate the author of 'Kenilworth,' and 'Quentin Durward,' is a task worthy of Mr. Ainsworth's genius; and no one sensible of the value of blending the amusing with the instructive, can regard with indifference such an addition to the series of standard historical novels as the one under our notice. 'Old Saint Paul's, a tale of the Plague and the Fire,' has more merit for ingenuity and originality than either the 'Tower,' or 'Guy Fawkes.' The career and fate of the heroine, Amabel, with the entire new phases in which we view the character period of the plague, form an interest unabated throughout the three volumes. We little think, we live in these tranquil times, of the horrors that have fallen, comparatively but a few years ago, upon men like unto ourselves." -The St. James's Magazine |
