it now becomes needful to speak more particularly, and to the glory which their former achievements have acquired under the eye of their sovereign. And here we must revert to certain points of their history, partly unknown to themselves, and of course concealed from the reader till a late period of the tale. At the commencement of the Dominican persecutions, Marie de Mortemar, a noble heiress of the new persuasion, and considered by the Albigenses as their patron and prophetess, is violated and plundered of her possessions by the former Lord of Courtenaye and the Bishop of Toulouse, in whose outrages Count Raymond, then a strong Catholic partizan, participates. Driven forth a desperate outcast, Marie de Mortemar preserves the thirst for vengeance which has succeeded to her former spiritual pride, and devotes her whole soul and body to its gratification. A feud subsequently taking place between Raymond and the Lord of Courtenaye, the castle of the former is surprised during his absence by his enemy, and his family massacred, excepting two of his sons, whom Marie de Mortemar is, by some extraordinary means, enabled to rescue. Paladour, the eldest, is educated by an agent of his unseen patroness, and sworn in his infancy to destroy the last of his enemy's race, when made known to him; like a hooded falcon, however, he is kept ignorant of the identity of his destined victim; and having been equipped in all points by the same unseen hand, to seek fortune and distinction, he is introduced to our notice, in the opening of this tale, on his march to join the crusaders, with the obscure memory of his early vow haunting his mind like a deadly spectre. " as one Who dares not turn his head, Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." After the events aiready alluded to, Paladour wins the heart of the Lady Isabella de Courtenaye, heiress of the castle and lands of the late lord, and niece of the present, who, though jealous of the success of Paladour, and recognizing him as the destined enemy of his race, is not able to prevent the celebration of the marriage. On the evening, however, of the bridal festival, it is revealed to Paladour by the sudden appearance of Marie de Mortemar, that his bride is the person whom he is sworn to murder. In the attempt to prevent the suicide which Paladour naturally prefers to the fulfilment of his vow, Isabella receives a wound nearly fatal; and both Ꮮ1 .. VOL. XXI. MAY, 1824. parties, dangerously hurt, are spirited away by Marie de Mortemar, during the confusion caused in the castle by the fate of the wicked uncle, who is just at this crisis burnt alive in a vault below, through an accident caused by a bungling witch. This is of course the grand period of horror and distress, as Isabella, so far as appears to the reader, is murdered, and Paladour has disappeared; become a monk or an outlaw, mad or drowned. In due time, however, he emerges to life, having banded himself with the troops of Raymond for the express purpose of getting rid of it; and Amirald, converted to heresy by the beautiful daughter of an Albigeois pastor, whom he has rescued from sundry perils, appears in the ranks of the confederate lords, whom the outrages of the crusaders have united against the royal standard. Some tremendous fighting ensues in the author's best style. Paladour and Amirald, sworn brothers in arms from the commencement of the book, achieve miracles of valour in defence of their newly-adopted cause, to the discomfiture of Prince Louis and De Montfort, and the imminent.danger of the Oriflamme itself, and are discovered to be the lost sons of the Count of Toulouse. Amirald is united to his mistress Genevieve; and Paladour, whose deeds of desperate valour have magnified him more than once into a necromancer or devil, is reconciled to life by the re-appearance of Isabelle, who, like the spouse of Miss Holford's Wallace, has been in constant attendance on her unwitting lord in the novel disguise of a page. Finally, Marie de Mortemar, as if to make herself amends for her unusual fit of forbearance towards her young victims, poisons her enemy, the Bishop of Toulouse, and nearly the whole of his court, and dashes her own brains out. It will be easily imagined, that in the hands of Mr. Maturin, a story of this nature has lost none of the grand `picturesque character which it is capable of assuming. In what is professedly a wild romance, it is needless to canvass the improbability of the private part of the plot. Let it suffice, that those known public events which are alluded to, are detailed with sufficient historical accuracy, and that errors and anachronisms, when introduced for the sake of effect, are always remarked as such. Nay, we would gladly have seen it in some respects more improbable, and " an honest ghost" or two fairly introduced, in order to perform in the usual course of ghostly business,` much that occasions awkward and tedious explanation. Having undertaken to explain apparently supernatural occurrences by causes merely human, and deferring this explanation till the very last, in prder to keep curiosity on the alert, Mr. M. has neither leisure nor memory to account for every thing, and several 'matters therefore remain still ambiguous, which one good authorized spectre might have settled by a turn of his bony finger. The ominous superstition, indeed, of the loupgaron husband, the fiery arrow, and the spectre bridegroom, need not be traced farther than to the brains of old women, and the apparition which haunts the retina of poor Paladour, may be accounted for by nervous excitement; but the shriek, and the spots of blood on bis armour, in p. 41, vol. I., as well as the voice of Marie speaking at her ease from the vault where her confederates are burning, are not quite so clearly explained. To these we will add the appearance of Isabelle in her grave-clothes, glaring silently with unearthly eyes upon Genevieve, at a moment when ber dangerous wound would not have enabled her to leave her couch on such ill-advised rambles. Much as we admire the fair and generous young heiress, and heartily as we rejoice in her recovery, our better judgment whispers, that the unity of character in the story would have been better preserved by leaving her a ghost, and allowing Paladour to fall in the last battle. By this means the idea which, since the days of the Greek tragedians, has been such a potent source of terror and pity, namely, a stern, uncontroulable destiny, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, and involving in its vengeance the young, the beautiful, the brave, and the good, might have been developed more fully, and Raymond of Toulouse more adequately punished for his former enormities; while Marie de Mortemar would have kept up her dignity, instead of becoming, like old Norna, a baffled busybody and a false prophetess. Against this formidable old lady of the Meg Merrilie's school, we must beg leave to enter our protest. We would remind Mr. M. that the great progenitor of her numerous sisters and cousins is apparently grown tired of their propagation, and could he stop their future increase as easily as Addison killed Sir Roger de Coverley, would gladly do so: but alas! a few brilliant instances of success have encouraged the breed, till they swarm in all our quarters with the pestilent pertinacity of Egyptian frogs. Marie de Mortemar is as great a caricature of the species as Norna or Sir Andrew Wylie's old gipsy, and as inferior to Meg or Elspeth, as her train of scullion witches are to the malignant beings who croak round the bier of Lucy Ashton. Though ruined in fortune, she possesses unlimited wealth for any purpose she chooses, and at rather a late period of life, an activity rivalled by none, and strength to overpower and stab to the heart a man of Herculean frame. As to the properties of lofty stature, dark eyes, shadowy garments, and the power of ubiquity, they belong to her as the common stock-property of ladies of this class, who seem to command every thing but their own turbulent passions. Like Norna also, and totally unlike the better specimens of this class, she is a very conceited person in her mysterious way, full of the pride of her nondescript office, and continually intruding herself for no distinct purpose but that of saying unwelcome things. In justice however to Mr. Maturin, it ought not to be forgotten, that he long ago caught and embodied the male of this species in the person of Orazio di Montorio, who is a genuinely terrific personage in his way. Among the rest of the charac ters the author's strength is rather divided equally, than concentrated on any particular one. We had expected to find among the Albigeois themselves, some powerful as well as beautiful and pleasing characters; and as far as Genevieve is concerned, we are not disappointed. In Mattathias and Boanerges however, instead of a Burley or Macbriar of the dark ages, we find nothing but xwQa ngоowna; very ferocious, strong, and noisy it is true, and brandishing their clubs like Ferrau and Ascaport, but possessing no mental characteristics to attract the attention: nor is the pastor Pierre distinguished by any particular trait from other persecuted and good men. Of the simple and ardent character of Genevieve, her devotedness, her affection, and her pious resignation, as contrasted with the despair and turbulent passions of the more violent spirits, the best conception is formed from the 6th chapter in vol. I. which indeed from beginning to end, is a masterly piece of eloquence and description. On the whole however, sufficient justice is hardly done by Mr. M. to this zealous and persecuted people. The ferocious ruffian, the brawling zealot, and the hypocritical glutton, form more prominent characters in his Prostestant dramatis personæ than the gifted or the good; and much as we deprecate polemical novels, we are disappointed to see the Albigeois reduced to the condition of " dumbs dogs who cannot bark," by the following specimen of striking oratory displayed by the Bishop of Toulouse in the conference. "Come back,' he exclaimed, at the close of his appeal ; ' come back, ye wanderers, to the bosom of your long suffering mother: ye have wounded, ye have wronged her, but she is your mother still. The bosom yet bleeding with the blows you have dealt is expanded this moment to receive and to embrace you; the arms you have tried to lop off are extended to invite you to peace and to felicity. "The visible presence of the Deity amid these his most stupendous works calls on you for solemn deliberation and salutary choice. He hath shaken mountains mightier than those which lower and darken around you; and will you in your pride be more inflexible than they? He hath made the streams to gush from rocks more hard and sterile than those from which you descended; and will your hearts be less penetrable than they? All Nature, animated and inanimate, is pleading with you; see this plain overspread with the mighty of the earth, the nobles of the land: with sheathed sword and hand sheld out in peace they supplicate you to have mercy on your own souls. Behold those hills covered to their summits with thousands of the faithful: they implore you by their presence to turn from the error of your way and live. Behold,' he cried, beings above the heights of the utmost hills. Yon vast congregation is but a shadow of that which watches you from above. There be patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, saints and spirits in paradise; and the seraphim in ascending circles of glory, order above order, up to the hierarchy of the bright archangels who stand nearest to the throne of God and tremble at their own exaltation: all that glorious company are pleading for you, to you, this moment. Myriads on myriads, from glorified mortals to the first order of created beings; angels who kept their first estate: such are your witnesses, your advocates. They bend from their intercession-they look down on you: they say, for you we burned and bled-for you were we stretched on the rack and chained to the stake; by the vast weight of our merits we have inclined the eternal scales in your behalf, till the accusing angel himself resigned his office." Vol. II. p. 64. 1 As to Paladour and Amirald, they are preux chevaliers of the most approved sort, brave and gentle, sans peur et sans reproche," and perform their devoir with brilliant success. It is hardly possible to impart any variety to characters of this kind, and even Ivanhoe, with all his careless bardihood and fiery enthusiasm, with difficulty escapes the general stigma of monotony. There is moreover, a prettiness of person and demeanour, and a consciousnes of grace in both brothers, which rather reminds us of Miss Porter's heroes, than of the rough young Saxon crusader, or the "Gentle Bachelor" in the Flabliaux, whose deeds, when put to it, they emulate and even outstrip. "What gentle bachelor is he, Whose infant food a helm did yield? |