and Front-de-Boeuf's castle is belea guered. The gallant knight, Bois Guilbert, a knight templar, and Ivanhoe's grand opponent in the tournament, forms one of the party in the castle. Here he falls in love with the Jewess, and attempts to gain her consent to his wishes. In spite of this persecution, she finds means to attend upon her wounded knight, and during the tremendous siege of the castle, she gets up to a window in his apartment, and describes to him the whole process of the storming, which is headed by the black knight. The castle is finally burnt by the assistance of Ulrica, an old cast-off mistress of Front-de-Boeuf. That Baron, who has been wounded in the conflict, lies howling in his bed, unable to help himself, while the fires are gathering round his head, and all his wicked deeds round his conscience. He was indeed a very precious fellow, he had knocked his old father on the head, had committed all sorts of cruelties and abominations, and two days before had been on the point of roasting old Isaac the Jew upon a gridiron. Bois-Guilbert makes off with the Jewess in the confusion of storming the castle. The black knight gains Ivanhoe's chamber, and saves him from the flames. He is Richard himself in disguise!-Bois-Guilbert had carried the fair Jewess, Rebecca, to a house belonging to the order of the templars, where he secreted her; but she is discovered to the Superior, a person of extreme sanctity, who had lately come from the Holy Land, for the purpose of reforming the corrupt manners of the order, and he is for burning her as a witch. Ivanhoe, though scarcely recovered from his wound, appears in the critical moment as her champion, and fights with Bois-Guilbert, who had been cruelly fixed upon as the champion of the templars. They both fall to the ground, but Bois-Guilbert is found to be dead, not from the spear of his enemy, but from the violent conflict of his passions. The king appears-Cedric is reconciled to his son the latter marries Rowena, and Rebecca leaves the country, after having made a tender visit to the wife of her knight.

This is a most meagre sketch, and does not comprehend one half of the incidents, nor does it give an insight into one of the characters. They

are admirably drawn and discriminated-the profligate, but high-spirited Bois-Guilbert, with the ambition of the adventurer burning under the half-warrior character of the priest

the more epicurean licentiousness of his friend, the Prior of Jorvaulx, who exactly corresponds with the character of the monk in Chaucer, prefixed as a motto to the chapter which introduces him-the severe manners, and bigoted, though sincere piety of Beaumanoir, chief of the order of templars, and many other clerical characters, none of whom, we are sorry to say, are over good-this forms one striking department of his picture. We have heard our author blamed for this view which he has given of the clergy; but in painting the general manners of an age, those which are most prominent are naturally brought forward. There were, no doubt, good pious priests in the hearts of their monasteries; but they did not come into the light of day. It was the warlike, the licentious, the bigoted, and the worldly-minded, who formed the moving characters in the busy scene, and we really do not see that they are here touched in a way to indicate any dislike or contempt for the order in general. We have received, however, a letter from a fair inmate of the ruined monastery of Aberbrothick, which shall appear in another part of our Number, expressive of a different opinion; and if to satisfy her, and those who think with her, our author will take some opportunity of introducing such a priest as Chaucer has also given him the model of, his fine genius could give it infinite effect. There is no author who has represented the power of religion more nobly than himself, even when intermingled with the imperfections and extravagancies of human passions. With all the abuse thrown upon him for his representation of the covenanters, we never read his character of their doings, without feeling the grandeur of their principles, amidst all their distortion; and where is there the representation of the power nuine piety more strikingly pourtrayed than in the character of David Deans?

of ge

The Saxon characters, too, are admirable. At the head of these is the testy, but respectable and generous Cedric, with his fine accompaniment of the swineherd Gurtha, and the

jester Wamba. Athelstane is, indeed, a caricature, but such as has its merit too, and if he did not rise again from the dead, we should have little objection to him. But after having eaten and drank quite as much as was his due, that he should be brought to life, after we had become a little sorry for his death, merely that he might have a second course of eating and drinking, was an unnecessary stretch of good nature; and it is here, chiefly, that we think our author goes out of his way to have an unnecessary hit at the church, in representing a whole monastery combining to bury this hulk of Saxon royalty alive. The fact is, he has rather too great a love of old stories, and we suppose the whole secret of this resurrection to have been, that he might lug in, by hook or by crook, some foolish legend which had stuck in his fancy.

step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful. But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.

"Holy Abraham !' he exclaimed, he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his corselet of goodly price-but to carry him to our house! damsel, has thou well considered ?

he is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and Gentle, save for the advantage of our commerce."

"Speak not so, my dear father,' replied Rebecca; we may not indeed mix in wounds and in misery, the Gentle bewith them in banquet and in jollity; but

cometh the Jew's brother."

"I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela would opine on it,' replied Isaac; nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death. Let Seth and Reuben bear him to Ashby.'

"Nay, let them place him in my litter,' said Rebecca, I will mount one of the palfreys.'

King John, and his Norman courThat were to expose thee to the gaze tiers, are an excellent contrast to the Saxons. Gay, light-spirited, profli- of those dogs of Ishmael and of Edom,' gate, witty, they are finely opposed to whispered Isaac, with a suspicious glance the dogged, honest, and somewhat towards the crowd of knights and squires. But Rebecca was already busied in carrystupid downrightness of the conquering her charitable purpose into effect, and ed party. It is chiefly, indeed, in the listed not what he said, until Isaac, seizing slaves and jesters that the Saxon ge- the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed nius breaks loose from its formality in a hurried voice- Beard of Aaron!and gravity. They are a far more in- what if the youth perish!-if he die in ventive class than their masters. De our custody, shall we not be held guilty of Bracy is the best specimen of the Nor- his blood, and be torn to pieces by the man courtier. Front-de-Boeuf is a multitude ?' most hateful one of the feudal baron. We rather weary, we confess, of the scenes of horror in his castle, though very powerfully drawn, and have an utter detestation of the hag Ulrica.

The part of the book, which we think always delightful, and where we cannot find a failure, is the forest scenery, and the manners of the outlaws. We may place King Richard himself among these, for he is really the very king of good fellows throughout, and is quite as joyous as Shakespeare's Hal, but still more encircled with the brilliant fascination of the chivalrous character.

The Jew and the Jewess-but they must speak for themselves.

"When Ivanhoe sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, the importunity of Rebecca prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of Ahby. It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Isaac to this

"He will not die, my father,' said Rebecca, gently extricating herself from the grasp of Isaac- he will not die unless we abandon him, and if so, we are, indeed, answerable for his blood to God and to man.'

"Nay,' said Isaac, releasing his hold, it grieveth me as much to see the drops of his blood, as if they were so many golden bezants from mine own purse; and I well know, that the lessons of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium, whose soul is in Paradise, hath made thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs, and the force of elixirs. Therefore do as thy mind giveth thee-thou art a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my fathers.'

"The apprehensions of Isaac, however, were not ill-founded; and the generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her return to Astby, to the unhallowed gaze of Brian de Bois Guil

bert.

The Templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and ardent look on the beautiful Jewess;

and we have already seen the consequences of the admiration which her charms excited, when accident threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary.

"Rebecca lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to bind up his wounds. The youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his

heart.

"But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. The aid of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the Christians, that the Jewish Rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of the sages of Israel. Neither did the Rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added nothing (for what could add aught) to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he could not be equally despised. It is, besides, probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.

"The beautiful Rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived. Her knowledge of medicine and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged Jewess, the daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved Rebecca as her daughter, and was believed to have communicated to her secrets, which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same time, and under the same circumstances. The fate of Miriam had, indeed, been to fall a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her Becrets had survived in her apt pupil.

"Rebecca, thus endowed with know

ledge as with beauty, was universally revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of those gifted women mentioned in the sacred history. Her father himself, out of reverence for her talents, which involuntarily mingled itself with his unbounded affection, permitted the maiden a greater liberty then was usually indulged to those of her sex by the habits of their people, and was, as we have just seen, frequently guided by her opinion, even in preference to his own.

"When Ivanhoe reached the habitation of Isaac, he was still in a state of unconsciousness, owing to the profuse loss of blood which had taken place during his exertions in the lists. Rebecca examined the wound, and having applied to it such vulnerary remedies as her art prescribed, informed her father that if fever could be averted, of which the great bleeding rendered her little apprehensive, and if the healing balsam of Miriam retained its virtue, there was nothing to fear for his guest's life, and that he might with safety travel to York with them on the ensuing day. Isaac looked a little blank at this annunciation. His charity would willingly have stopped short at Ashby, or, at most, would have left the wounded Christian to be tended in the house where he was residing at present, with an assurance to the Hebrew to whom it belonged, that all expences should be duly discharged. To this, however, Rebecca opposed many reasons, of which we shall only mention two that had peculiar weight with Isaac. The one was, that she would on no account put her phial of precious balsam into the hands of another physician even of her own tribe, lest that valuable mystery should be discovered; the other, that this wounded knight, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, was an intimate favourite of Richard Cœur de Lion, and that, in case the monarch should return, Isaac, who had supplied his brother John with treasure to prosecute his rebellious purposes, would stand in no small need of a powerful protector who enjoyed Richard's favour.

Thou art speaking but sooth, Rebecca,' said Isaac, giving way to these weighty arguments it were an offending of Heaven to betray the secrets of the blessed Miriam; for the good which Heaven giveth, is not rashly to be squandered upon others, whether it be talents of gold and shekels of silver, or whether it be the secret mysteries of a wise physician-assuredly they should be preserved to those to whom Providence hath vouchsafed them. And him whom the Nazarenes of England call the Lion's Heart, assuredly it were better for me to fall into the hands of a strong lion of Idumea than into his, if he shall have got assurance of my dealing with his brother. Wherefore I will lend ear to thy counsel, and this youth shall