surrounded by luxury and that refinement which is the poetry of riches; but she knew that Danger stood at the threshold, and that Fear was the unbidden guest who peered through their silken hangings. The timid temper lives in perpetual terror, the nobler one braces itself to endure whenever the appointed time shall come. History offers no picture more extraordinary than the condition of the Jews during the middle ages. Their torture and their destruction was deemed an acceptable sacrifice to that Saviour who was born of their race, and whose sermon on the Mount taught no lessons save those of peace and love. When Madame Roland went to execution, she turned towards the statue of that power, then adored with such false worship, and exclaimed, "Oh, liberty! what crimes are wrought in thy name!" The christian might say the same of his faith; but different in deed is the religion which is of God, and that which is of man.
In that criticism, now so often the staple of conversation, I have often heard it objected, that Rebecca could not have fallen in love with Ivanhoe—that her high-toned mind would have been attracted towards the Templar. This is a curious proof of the want of interest in Scott's heroes—we feel as if their good fortune were a moral injustice. The fact is, that respect for good old rules was an inherent part of Scott's mind; whatever was "gray
