d live, not one for whose sake she might forget herself
and win future happiness by present exertion; the Past, one yearning
memory for the husband, who had so soothed and cherished her, when any
other would have cast her from his heart as a worthless thing; the
Present, fraught with thoughts she dared not think, and words she
might not breathe; the very prayer for Stanley's safety checked--for
what could he be to her?--the Future shrouded in a pall so dense, she
could not read a line of its dark page, for the torch of Hope was
extinguished, and it is only by her light we can look forward;
Isabella's affection apparently lost for ever; was it marvel energy
and hope had so departed, or that a deadening despondency seemed to
crush her heart and sap the very springs of life?

But in the midst of that dense gloom one ray there was, feeble indeed
at first as if human suffering had deadened even that, but brightening
and strengthening with every passing day. It was the sincerity of her
faith--the dearer, more precious to its followers, from the scorn and
condemnation, in which it was held by man.

The fact that the most Catholic kingdom, of Spain, was literally
peopled with secret Jews, brands this unhappy people, with a degree
of hypocrisy, in addition to the various other evil propensities
with which they have been so plentifully charged. Nay, even amongst
themselves in modern times, this charge has gained ascendency; and
the romance-writer who would make use of this extraordinary truth,
to vividly picture the condition of the Spanish Jews, is accused of
vilifying the nation, by reporting practices, opposed to the upright
dictates of the religion of the Lord. It is well to pronounce such
judgment _now_, that the liberal position which we occupy in most
lands, would render it the height of dissimulation, and hypocrisy, to
conceal our faith; but to judge correctly of the secret adherence to
Judaism and public profession of Catholicism which characterized
our ancestors in Spain, we must transport ourselves not only to
the _country_ but to the _time_, and recall the awfully degraded,
crushing, and stagnating position which _acknowledged Judaism_
occupied over the whole known world. As early as 600--as soon, in
fact, as the disputes and prosecutions of Arian against Catholic, and
Catholic against Arian, had been checked by the whole of Spain being
subdued and governed by Catholic kings--intolerance began to work
against the Je