Thackeray

he subject, were it not that there are among his tales two or three so exceedingly good of their kind, coming so entirely up to our ide

e Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan, A Legend of the Rhine, and Rebecca and Rowena. It is of these that I will now speak. The History of the Next French Revo

major tells us that he always kept in his own apartment a small store of gunpowder; "always keeping it under my bed, with a candle burning for fear of accidents." Or when he describes his courage; "I was running,-running as the brave stag before the hounds,-running, as I have done a great number of times in my life, when there was no help for it but a run." Then he tells us of his digestion. "Once in Spain I ate the leg of a horse, and was so eager to swallow this morsel, that I bolted the

rew strong portcullis and bars of steel; where the wallflowers now quiver in the ramparts there were silken banners embroidered with wonderful heraldry; men-at-arms marched where now you shall only see a bank of moss or a hideous black champignon; and in place of the rats and owlets, I warrant me there were ladies and knights to revel in the g

ard which was attached. It had run, "Count Ludwig de Hombourg, Jerusalem, but the name of the Holy City had been dashed out with the pen, and that of Godesberg substituted." "By St. Hugo of Kat

anger, one Hildebrandt. Gottfried, we see with half an eye, has done it all. It is in vain that Ludwig de Hombourg tells his old friend Karl that this Gottfried is a thoroughly bad fellow, that he had been found to be a cardsharper in the Holy Land, and had been drumm

to a certain family likeness. Can it be that he is not the father of his own child? He is playing cards with his friend Ludwig when that tra

le has no comfort but in his friend Gottfried, a distant cousin who is to inherit everything. All this is told to Sir Ludwig,-who immediately takes steps to repair the mischief. "A cup of coffee straight," s

een vineyards and golden cornfields; away up the steep mountains, where he frightened the eagles in their eyries; away down the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble; away through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howling; away over the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone; away through the splashing quagmires, where the will-o'

lge their wicked secrets, and this knight Gottfried does so now. Sir Ludwig carries the news home to the afflicted husband and father; who of course instantly sends off messengers for his wife and son. The wife won't come

eneath the water, never lifting his head for a single moment between G

d Robin Hood the twig in Ivanhoe. Then one of his companions is married, or nearly married, to the mysterious "Lady of Windeck,"-would have been married but for Otto, and that the bishop and dean, who were dragged up from their long-ago graves to p

he enlists in the duke's archer-guard as simple soldier, contrives to fight with the Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschrenkenstein, and of course kills him. "'Yield, yield, Sir Rowski!' shouted he in a calm voice. A blow dealt madly at his head was the reply. It was the last blow that the count of Eulenschrenkenstein ever struck in battle. The curse was on his lips as the crashing steel descended into his brain a

d joins her jealous husband, and that the duke's daughter has always, in truth, kno

st or annoy those who most love the original. There is not a word in it having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung from the genuine humour created in Thackeray's mind by his aspect of the romantic. We remember how reticent, how dignified was Rowena,-how cold we perhaps thought her, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing, that kissing and squeezing, between her and Ivanhoe which we used to think necessary to lovers' bliss

ady orders that the fool shall have three-dozen lashes. "I got you out of Front de B?uf's castle," said

very happy even when most domestic. Ivanhoe becomes sad and moody. He takes to drinking, and his lady does not forget to tell him of it. "Ah dear axe!" he exclaims, apostrophising his weapon, "ah gentle steel! that was a merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of the Emir Abdul Melek!" There was nothing left to him but his memories; and "in a word, his life was intolerable." So he determines that he will go and look after king Richard, who of course was wandering abroad. He anticipates a little difficulty with his wife; but sh

d except when he has slaughtered some hundreds, are delightful. Roger de Backbite and Peter de Toadhole are intended to be quite real. Then his majesty sings, passing off as his own, a song of Charles Lever's. Sir Wilfrid declares the truth, and twit

above us, good Sir B

ver moon to pause up

y orders, sure I ca

aves obey me, Bishop

g lowly; "Land and sea

he ocean; "Back," he sa

an answered with a

rew nearer, falling,

he bishop, back the k

h the size of the child, are burlesque all over. But the king has been wounded by a bolt from the bow of Sir Bertrand de Gourdon while he is slaughtering the infant, and there is an end of him. Ivanhoe, too, is killed at the siege,-Sir Roger de Bac

idus, belli du

ncea Normannia e

at. Per Turcos m

idit;-atque Hy

fossa sunt tan

est conjux cas

on we are tol

stone yo

d coffine

Wilfrid

marched

Flanders

h sword and

n Sarace

youth, the

g Paynims

he Templ

n tourne

erusal

s buried

eath the

l you find

his wido

he fate of

off by t

as eased o

ood lord A

adyship ma

y dead." He is of course cured of his wounds, though they take six years in the curing. And then he makes his way back to Rotherwood, in a friar's disguise

ow the wort

ve come to

ing robbers wherever he met them;-but sad at heart all the time. Then there comes a little burst of the author's own feelings, while he is burlesquing. "Ah my dear friends and British public, are there not others who are melancholy unde

present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury,-The Magna Charta." Athelstane also quarrels with the king, whose orders he disobeys, and Rotherwood is attacked by the royal army. No one was of real service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe,-and how could he

ch is being attacked. "An Ivanhoe! an Ivanhoe!" he bellowed out with a shout that overcame all the din of battle;-"Notre Dame à la recousse?" and to hurl his lance through the midriff of Reginald de Bracy, who was commanding the assault

oes his duty and finds them,-just in time to be present at Rowena's death. She has been put in prison by king John, and is in extremis when her first husband gets to her. "Wilfrid, my early loved,"

d thinking that it was to that little inno

. Walt

. Walt

a, staring wildly at him, "that

oe, "but this is too much," an

ersecute the Jews as so religious a knight should. So the Jews, in cursing the Christians, always excepted the name of the Desdichado,-or the double disinherited, as he now was,-the Desdichado Doblado." Then came the battle of Alarcos, and the Moors were all but in possession of the whole of Spain. Sir Wilfrid, like other good Christians, cannot endure this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where he happens to be quartered, and has himself carried to Barcelona, and proceeds "to slaughter the Moors forthwith." Then there is a scene in which Isaac of York comes on as a messenger, to ransom from a Spanish knight, Don Beltram de Cuchilla y Trabuco, y Espada, y Espelon, a little Moorish girl. The Spanish kni

so that she was locked up in the back-kitchen and almost starved to death. But Ivanhoe found her of course, and makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or Lady Wilfrid the second. Then Thackeray tells us how for many years he, Thackeray, had not ceased to feel that it ought to be so. "Indeed I have thought of it any time these five-and-twenty years,-e

ecca, as being the more beautiful and the more interesting of the heroines, was entitled to the possession of the hero. We have all of us felt the same. But to him had been present at the same time all that is ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age chivalry; the absurdity of its recorded deeds, the blood

TNO

. The "vixit avidus" is quite worthy of Thackeray; but had he tried his hand at such mode of expression he w

is very false in her declarations of love;-and it is to be feared that