im in her a fit mate. There is a spirit of reality in
this which transcends ordinary conceptions of what is called genius. To
deem a woman requisite aid in such intellectual labor--for so we may
well call the system of the Templars--would at that era have been
incomprehensibly absurd to any save the worshippers of the bi-sexed
Baphomet and the disciples of the House of Wisdom, with whom the equal
culture of the sexes was a leading aim. The extraordinary tact with
which Scott has contrived to make Bois Guilbert repulsive to the mass of
readers, while at the same time he really--for himself--makes him
undergo every sacrifice of which the Templar's nature is _consistently_
capable, is perhaps the most elaborately artistic effort in his works.
To have made Bois Guilbert sensible to the laws of love and of chivalry,
which in his mystical freedom he despised, to rescue her simply from
death, which in his view had no terrors beyond short-lived pain, would
not have agreed with his character as Scott very truly understood it.
Himself a sacrifice to fate, he was willing that she, whom he regarded
as a second self, should also perish. This reserving the true
comprehension of a certain character to one's self by a writer is not, I
believe, an uncommon thing in romance writing. 'Blifil' was the favorite
child of his literary parent, and was (it is to be hoped) seen by him
from a stand-point undreamed of by nearly all readers.

Closely allied in the one main point of character to Bois Guilbert, and
to a certain degree having his Oriental origin, yet differing in every
other detail, we have Hayraddin Maugrabin, the gypsy, in 'Quentin
Durward.'

When Walter Scott drew the outlines of this singular subordinate actor
in one of the world's greatest mediaeval romances, so little was known of
the real condition of the 'Rommany,' that the author was supposed to
have introduced an exaggerated and most improbable character among
historical portraits which were true to life. The more recent researches
of George Borrow and others have shown that, judged by the gypsy of the
present day, Hayraddin is extremely well drawn in certain particulars,
but improbable in other respects. He has, amid all his villany, a
certain firmness or greatness which is peculiar to men who can sustain
positions of rank--a marked Oriental 'leadership,' which Scott might be
presumed to have guessed at. Yet all of this corresponds closely to the
historical account of the