with age," to him "became religion." His rich and fertile mind poured the materials of a new world into literature—but he insisted that it should take a conventional shape, and be bound by given rules. It had long been a rule that vice was to be punished and virtue rewarded in fiction, whatever it might be in real life. It is one of the many mysteries of our moral nature, that there is something in high and striking qualities that seems as it were a temptation of fate. The ancients knew this well. Moreover there are faults which almost wear virtue's seeming, and to our weakness there is a wild attraction in these very faults—but as, according to Scott's code, such faults must be duly visited in the concluding chapters, he could not invest his hero with them. The said hero is usually a brave, handsome and well conducted young man, who gives his parents and readers as little anxiety as possible. Still the circumstances under which Rebecca sees Ivanhoe are managed with Scott's utmost skill—she knows him first as the benefactor of her father—she sees him first as the victor of the tournament, and she first comes in contact with him under the tenderest relations of kindness and service. But the "why did she love him?" may in a woman's case always be answered by Byron's vindication of "Kaled's" attachment to his own gloomy hero—
