“Have you then convents, to one of which you
mean to retire?” asked Rowena.
“No, lady,” said the Jewess; “but
among our people, since the time of Abraham downwards,
have been women who have devoted their thoughts to
Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to
men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving
the distressed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered.
Say this to thy lord, should he chance to enquire
after the fate of her whose life he saved.”
There was an involuntary tremour on Rebecca’s
voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed
more than she would willingly have expressed.
She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.
“Farewell,” she said. “May
He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on
you his choicest blessings! The bark that waits
us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.”
She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised
as if a vision had passed before her. The fair
Saxon related the singular conference to her husband,
on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived
long and happily with Rowena, for they were attached
to each other by the bonds of early affection, and
they loved each other the more, from the recollection
of the obstacles which had impeded their union.
Yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether
the recollection of Rebecca’s beauty and magnanimity
did not recur to his mind more frequently than the
fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.
Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of Richard,
and was graced with farther marks of the royal favour.
He might have risen still higher, but for the premature
death of the heroic Coeur-de-Lion, before the Castle
of Chaluz, near Limoges. With the life of a generous,
but rash and romantic monarch, perished all the projects
which his ambition and his generosity had formed;
to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the
lines composed by Johnson for Charles of Sweden—–
His fate was destined to a foreign strand,
A petty fortress and an “humble” hand;
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Note A.—–The Ranger or the Forest,
that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs.
A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times
were the Forest Laws. These oppressive enactments
were the produce of the Norman Conquest, for the Saxon
laws of the chase were mild and humane; while those
of William, enthusiastically attached to the exercise
and its rights, were to the last degree tyrannical.
The formation of the New Forest, bears evidence to
his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy
village to the condition of that one commemorated
by my friend, Mr William Stewart Rose:
“Amongst the ruins of the church
The midnight raven found a perch,
A melancholy place;
The ruthless Conqueror cast down,
Woe worth the deed, that little town,
To lengthen out his chase.”
