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waves below as they floated by." Again, the history of Diana Vernon, whose purity and loftiness of character has been formed by hardships and difficulties, elicits some just and beautiful reflections on the trials and temptations of various kinds which they must encounter whose lot it is to struggle with the world: "How often," is the forcible concluding remark, "will the right and the expedient contend together, while the faults of others seem to justify our own, and the low but distinct voice within us be half lost while listening to the sophistry of temptation justifying itself by example! Yet how many nobly support the trial, while they have learned of difficulties to use the mental strength which overcomes them, and have been taught by errors to rely more decidedly on the instinctive sense of right, which at once shrinks from their admission!" Applying this truth to the history of Diana Vernon, "what," it is asked, "were to her the difficulties around her path, but as so many steps towards forming a character high-minded, steadfast, generous and true,—a lovely and lonely flower over which the rough winds have passed, leaving behind only the strength taught by resistance, and keeping fresh the fairness, blessing even the earth with its sweet and healthy presence."
As the character of Rebecca, the Jewess, "stands pre-eminent amid Scott's finest conceptions," so does it kindle into their truest eloquence the thoughts and feelings of L. E. L. "If there be one thing," she observes, "which redeems our fallen nature, which attests that its origin was from heaven, and its early home in paradise, it is the generous sympathy that, even in the most hardened and worldly, warms in the presence of the good and the beautiful. There must have been, even in those whose course has darkened into crime, an innocent and hopeful time; and the
