I think that it's important to remember that books like "The Three Musketeers" were written the way they were because people had to rely on the text to tell them a lot more than a book written today does. There were no video feeds or even photographs to fill in details like now days. When an author set the scene back then he/she had to go into a lot more detail than we'd think to include. Lew Wallace's "Ben Hur" is a good example. He describes the lay of the land (literally) in great detail. Maps weren't common back then and most people would never be able to travel to the area where the book was set so the book runs longer. Now days we also tend to live faster paced lives than people did back then too. It took weeks to cross the Atlantic ocean not so many generations ago and now we do it in a matter of hours.
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