mand of Edward I. of England, the Mirror of Chivalry, one of the
bravest knights in the host of the Crusaders, that two of the noblest
ladies in Scotland were hung up in iron cages, exposed like wild beasts
to the view of the populace. Facts like this mark the standard of public
feeling, and may teach us that there was little real consideration for
women in those times;--and where that is not found, there can be little
refinement. Scantiness of information, and the necessity of assimilating
to modern tastes a picture which, if it could have been obtained, would
probably have been disagreeable, has obliged the Author of Waverley to
draw much from the resources of his poetical mind in the depicting of
female character. And wisely has he so done; for we regard many of the
females in his tales only as beautiful and poetical creations; and we
are gratified without being deceived. We find no fault with him for
having made his Minna and Brenda beings such as the daughters of a
Shetland Udaller, nearly a century and a half ago, were not likely to
have been;--we blame him not because in his Rebecca, that most charming
production of an imagination rich with images of nobleness and beauty,
he has exhibited qualities incompatible with the real situation of the
daughter of that most oppressed and abject being, a Jew of the twelfth
century. It is plain that if Minna or Rebecca had been drawn with a
strict regard to probability, and made just such as they were most
likely to have been, one of the great objects of fiction would have been
reversed: the reader would have been repelled instead of being
attracted. This poetical tone pervades, more or less, the delineations
of all his heroines; and the charm which it imparts, perhaps more than
counterbalances the detrimental tendency of sameness. At the same time,
we may add, that it is least exhibited when circumstances seem least to
require it. His heroines are, on the whole, better treated, as such,
than his heroes, who are, for the most part, thrown into the ring to be
bandied about, the sport of circumstances;--owing almost all their
interest to the events which thicken around them. Many of them exhibit
no definite character, or, when they rise above nonentities, are not so
much individuals as abstractions. A strong fraternal likeness to the
vacillating Waverley does not raise them in our esteem. They seem too
nearly imitations of the most faulty portion of that otherwise admirable
tale.