Two of the most illuminating passages in Historical Terms are the last chapter of Waverley and the first chapter of Mrs Gaskell's life of Charlotte Bronte. The former is almost an anthropological treatise on the demise of the clan system, the latter is an introduction to the area of Keighley in the burgeoning railway age. Mrs Gaskell wrote one line that Jane Austen could not have written 'What Time is your train [N&S] and all in a matter of 20 years.