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light of that hour, however perverted and shadowed, is never quite extinguished. Enough remains to kindle, if but for a moment, the electric admiration, whose flash, like the lightning, is from above.****We are tempted, and we fall; we lack resolution to act upon the promptings of our better and inward self; the wings of our nobler aspirations melt in the heat of exertion; the dust of the highway chokes our finer breathing; and if at any time we pause and commune with ourselves, alas! what do we find ourselves to be?—low, weak, selfish and old; how different from what we once hoped to be! But nature is never quite subdued to what she works in: and hence the homage, that is of love, rises to that which is above us—to beauty and to truth."
Many valuable truths and fine moral lessons does L. E. L. beautifully suggest to our minds from her own impression of Scott's interesting narrative of the Jewess. "The characteristic of Rebecca is high mindedness born of self-reliance. From a very infant she must have been a 'being breathing thoughtful breath.'*** From her infancy she must have learnt to be alone. Solitude, which enervates the weak, feeds and invigorates the strong, mind. Skilled in the art of healing, she knew the delight of usefulness; and she learnt to pity, because familiar with suffering. No one, not even the most careless, can stand beside the bed of sickness and death without learning their sad and solemn lessons. Within her home she was 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.***History offers no picture more extraordinary than the condition of the Jews during the middle ages. Their torture and
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