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.

Scenic Description.

Good as are the descriptions of quiescent objects, it is in his treatment of events,—­of the visible operations of man, or of the elements,—­that the author displays most power.  What have we finer of its kind, than the storm in the Antiquary?  The sullen sunset—­the advancing tide—­the rocks half hidden by the rising foam—­the marks of promised safety fading from sight, and with them the hope they nourished—­the ledge which the sufferers gained with difficulty—­on the one side, a raging sea, and on the other, a barrier that forbade retreat!  Guy Mannering contains another masterpiece—­the night attack of Portanferry, witnessed by Bertram.  We feel as though we were that person—­we see and hear all of which his eyes and ears had cognizance; and the impression is the more strong, because the writer has told only that, and left the rest to our imagination.  This illustrates one feature of the author’s skill.  He knows the effect producible by leaving circumstances in the incompleteness and obscurity in which they often present themselves to the senses of a single person; he tells just what that person could have perceived, and leaves the sketch to be finished by his reader.  Thus, when Porteous is hurried away to execution, we attend his ruthless conductors, but we wait not to witness the last details, but flee with Butler from the scene of death, and looking back from afar, see through the lurid glare of torches a human figure dangling in the air—­and the whole scene is more present to our minds, than if every successive incident had been regularly unfolded.  Thus, when Ravenswood and his horse vanish from the sight of Colonel Ashton, we feel how the impressiveness and beauty of the description are heightened by placing us where the latter stood,—­showing us no more than he could have witnessed, and bidding our imaginations to fill up the awful doubtful chasm.