ely outside the
domain of her experience. She had to evolve a Jew out of her moral
consciousness, and her delineation is as little successful as that of
other writers who have set themselves the same task. Her zeal outran her
judgment; her elaborate apology is feeble; and if the Jews needed
vindication they could hardly be flattered by one of this nature, for
she does not introduce us to a true Jew at all. Her ideas were based
upon that rare and beautiful character, Moses Mendelssohn, a character
as little typical of the Jewish as of any other race or religious creed,
but common to all men who think and feel philosophically and have raised
themselves above the petty prejudices of mankind. This was as much as to
say that only a Jew who was no Jew was admirable and estimable. And even
his daughter Berenice, whom we are led to regard throughout as a Jewess,
is finally discovered to have been born of a Christian mother and
christened in her youth, so that her lover, Harrington, can marry her
without any sacrifice to his social and racial prejudices. This is weak
indeed, since the whole purpose of the story was to overcome the
baseless dislike Harrington had from childhood entertained for the mere
name of Jew. It would, therefore, have been far more to the purpose had
his prejudices been really, and not apparently, overcome. The truth is
that Miss Edgeworth herself was a lady not free from prejudices; and a
regard for the opinion of the world, for birth and social station, was
one of these. At the eleventh hour she probably could not reconcile
herself to letting her hero, a man of good society, marry a Spanish
Jewess; and since he had shown himself willing to do so, carried away by
his deep and sincere feeling, she doubtless held that he had done
enough, and so terrible a fate must be averted from his head.

The story could not and did not satisfy Miss Mordecai's requirements,
though she accepted it as an attempt at making amends. But the authoress
herself recognized in later life that her friend "had no reason to be
satisfied with it, as the Jewess turns out to be a Christian. Yet she
was good enough to accept it as a peace-offering, and to consider that
this was an Irish blunder, which, with the best intentions, I could not
avoid."

Contemporary opinion certainly treated _Harrington_ as not one of the
happiest of their favorite novelist's stories. Yet with all its palpable
defects there is such an admixture of excellence