Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863

Vox refert parva; terræque immurmurat haustæ.'[10 - Ovid. Metamorphoseon, lib. xi. v. 183.]

It is to be remarked, in studying collectively these outlaws as set forth by Scott, that while the same characteristic lies at the basis of each, there is very great variety in its development, and that the author seems to have striven to present it in as many widely differing phases as he was capable of doing. When we reflect that Scott himself could not be fairly said to be perfectly at home in more than half a dozen departments of history, and yet that he has taken pains to set forth as many historical varieties of minds absolutely emancipated from all faith, and finally, when we recall that at the time when he wrote, the great proportion of the characteristics of these dramatis personæ were utterly unappreciated, and that by even the learned they were simply reviewed as 'infidels,' we cannot but smile at the care with which (like the sculptor in the old story) he carved his images, and buried them to be dug up at a future day by men who, as he possibly hoped, would appreciate more fully than did his contemporaries his own degree of forbidden knowledge. I certainly do not exaggerate the importance of these characters when speaking in this manner. They could not have been conceived without a very great expenditure of study and of reflection. They are, as I said, subjective, and such portraits of humanity always involve a vastly greater amount of penetrative and long-continued thought, than do the mere historical and social photographs which constitute the bulk of Scott's, as of all novels, and form the favorites of the mass of readers for entertainment.

First among these characters, and most important as indicating direct historical familiarity with the obscure subject of the Oriental heresies of the Middle Ages in Europe, I would place that of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, who is generally regarded by readers as simply 'a horrid creature,' who chased 'that darling Rebecca' out of the window to the verge of the parapet; or at best as a knightly ruffian, who, like most ruffianly sinners, quieted conscience by stifling it with doubt. Very different, however, did the Templar appear to Scott himself, who, notwithstanding the poetic justice meted to the knight, evidently sympathized in secret more warmly with him than with any other character in the gorgeous company of 'Ivanhoe.' Among them all he is the only one who fully and fairly appreciates the intellect of Rebecca, and, seen from the stand-point of rigid historical probability which Scott would not violate, all allowance being made for what the Templar was, he appears by far the noblest and most intelligent of all the knightly throng. I say that though a favorite, Scott would not to favor him, violate historical probability. Why should he? It formed no part of his plan to give the public of his day lessons in illuminée-ism. Had he done so he would have failed like 'George Sand' in 'Consuelo;' but a very small proportion indeed of whose readers retain a recollection of the doctrines which it is the main object of the book to set forth. I trust there is no slander in the remark, but I must believe it to be true until I see that the majority of the readers of that work have also taken to zealously investigating the sources of that most forbidden lore, which has most certainly this peculiarity, that no one can comprehend it ever so little without experiencing an insatiable, never-resting desire to exhaust it, like everything which is prohibited. There is no such thing as knowing it a little. As one of its sages said of old, its knowledge rushes forth into infinite lands.

It was, I believe, some time before 'Ivanhoe' appeared, that Baron von Hammer Purgstall had published his theory that the Knights Templars were, although most unjustly treated, still guilty, in a certain sense, of the extraordinary charges brought against them. It seems at least to be tolerably certain that during their long residence in the East they had acquired the Oriental secrets of initiation into societies which taught the old serpent-lore of eritis sicut Deus, and positive knowledge; the ultimate secret, being the absolute nothingness of all faith, creeds, laws, ties, or rules to him who is capable of rising above them and of drawing from Nature by an 'enlightened' study of her laws the principles of action, of harmony with fellow men, and of unlimited earthly enjoyment. Such had been for ages the last lessons of all the 'mysteries' of the East – mysteries which it was the peculiar destiny of the Hebrew race to resist through ages of struggle. It was through the teaching of such mysteries of pantheistic naturalism that, as the unflinching Jewish deists and anthropomorphists believed, man fell, and their belief was set forth in their very first religious tradition – the history of the apple, the serpent, and the Fall. And it is to the very extraordinary nature of the Hebrew race, by which they presented for the first time in history the spectacle of a people resisting nature-worship, that they owe their claim to be a peculiar people.

The Templars, under the glowing skies of the East, among its thousand temptations, those of superior knowledge not being the least; in an age when the absurdities of the Roman church were, to an enlightened mind, at their absurdest pitch, fell readily into 'illumination.' Whether they literally worshipped the Oriental Baphomet, a figure with two heads, male and female, girt with a serpent, typifying the completest abnegation of all moral relations, and the rights of knowledge, no one can say now – it is, however, significant that this symbol, which they undoubtedly used, actually found its way under the freemasons into the Christian churches of the West, as a type of 'prudence' among the representations of Christian virtues. When we remember that the Gnostics taught that prudence alone was virtue,[11 - Hæc autem erat Gnosticorum doctrina ethica, quod omnem virtutem in prudentia sitim esse credebant, quam Ophitæ per Metem (Sophiam) et Serpentem exprimebant, desumpto iterum ex Evangelii præcepto; estote prudentes ut serpentes, – ob innatem hujus animalis astutiam? – Von Hammer, Fundgruben des Orients, tom. vi. p. 85.] we have here a coincidence which sufficiently explains the meaning of this emblem of 'the baptism of mind.'

Nothing is more likely than that a portion of the Knights Templars were initiated in the mysteries of such Oriental sects as those of the House of Wisdom of Al Hakem, the seventh and last degree of which at first 'inculcated the vanity of all religion, and the indifference of actions which are neither visited with recompense nor chastisement here or hereafter.' At a later age, when the doctrines of this society had permeated all Islam, it seems to have labored very zealously to teach both women and men gratuitously all learning, and give them the freest use of books. At this time it was in the ninth degree that the initiate 'learnt the grand secret of atheism, and a code of morals, which may be summed up in a few words, as believing nothing and daring everything.'[12 - New Curiosities of Literature. By Geo. Soane, London, 1849.]

Bearing this in mind, Walter Scott may be presumed to have studied with shrewd appreciation the character of the Templars, and to have conjectured with strange wisdom their great ambition, when we find Brian de Bois Guilbert declaring to Rebecca that his Order threatened the thrones of Europe, and hinting at tremendous changes in society – 'hopes more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch.' For it was indeed the hope – it must have been – for the proud and powerful brotherhood of the Temple to extend their secret doctrines over Europe, regenerate society, and overthrow all existing powers, substituting for them its own crude and impossible socialism, and for Christianity the lore of the serpent. How plainly is this expressed in the speech of Bois Guilbert to Rebecca:

'Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the baton of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of Kings – a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne – our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly expected Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.'

'Sayest thou this to one of my people?' answered Rebecca. 'Bethink thee' —

'Answer me not,' said the Templar, 'by urging the difference of our creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in derision. Think not we long remain blind to the idiotic folly of our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasures of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. Our Order soon adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better indemnification for our sacrifices. Our immense possessions in every kingdom of Europe, our high military fame, which brings within our circle the flower of chivalry from every Christian clime – these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak spirits as embrace our Order on the ancient principles, and whose superstition makes them our passive tools. But I will not further withdraw the veil of our mysteries.'

We may well pause for an instant to wonder what would have been the present state of the now civilized world had this order with its Oriental illuminéeism actually succeeded in undermining feudal society and in overthrowing thrones. That it was jointly dreaded by Church and State appears from the excessive, implacable zeal with which it was broken up by Philip the Fair and Pope Clement the Fifth – a zeal quite inexplicable from the motives of avarice usually attributed to them by the modern freemasonic defenders of the Knights of the Temple. I may well say modern, since in a freemasonic document bearing date 1766, reprinted in a rare work,[13 - Developpement des Abus introduits dans la Franc Maçonnerie. Ecossois de Saint André d'Écosse, &c., &c. Paris, 1780.] we find the most earnest protest and denial that freemasonry had anything in common with the Templars. But the Order did not die unavenged. It is by no means improbable that the secret heresies which, bearing unmistakable marks of Eastern origin, continually sprang up in Europe, and finally led the way to Huss and the Reformation, were in their origin encouraged by the Templars.

Certain it is that the character of Bois Guilbert as drawn by Scott – his habitual oath 'by earth and sea and sky!' his scorn of 'the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason,' and his atheistic faith that to die is to be 'dispersed to the elements of which our strange forms are so mystically composed,' are all wonderful indications of insight into a type of mind differing inconceivably from the mere infidel villain of modern novels, and which could never have been attributed to a knight of the superstitious Middle Ages without a strong basis of historical research. Very striking indeed is his fierce love for Rebecca – his intense appreciation of her great courage and firmness, which he at once recognizes as congenial to his own daring, and believes will form for him 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 mediæval 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 first of these wanderers, who in 1427 came to Europe, 'well mounted,' and claiming to be men of the highest rank, and to the condition and character of certain men among them in the Slavonian countries of the present day. If we study carefully all that is accessible both of the present and the past relative to this singular race, we shall find that Scott, partly from knowledge and partly by poetic intuition, has in this gypsy produced one of his most marvellous and deeply interesting studies.

Like Bois Guilbert, Hayraddin is a man without a God, and the peculiarity of his character lies in a constant realization of the fact that he is absolutely free from every form or principle of faith, every conventional tie, every duty founded on aught save the most natural instincts. He revels in this freedom; it is to him like magic armor, making him invulnerable to shafts which reach all around him – nay, which render him supremely indifferent to death itself. Whether this extreme of philosophical skepticism and stoicism could be consistently and correctly attributed to a gypsy of the fifteenth century, will be presently considered. Let me first quote those passages in which the character is best set forth. The first is that in which Hayraddin, in reply to the queries of Quentin Durward, asserts that he has no country, is not a Christian, and is altogether lawless:

'You are then,' said the wondering querist, 'destitute of all that other men are combined by – you have no law, no leader, no settled means of subsistence, no house or home. You have, may Heaven compassionate you, no country – and, may Heaven enlighten and forgive you, you have no God! What is it that remains to you, deprived of government, domestic happiness, and religion?'

'I have liberty,' said the Bohemian – 'I crouch to no one – obey no one – respect no one. – I go where I will – live as I can – and die when my day comes.'

'But you are subject to instant execution at the pleasure of the Judge?'

'Be it so,' returned the Bohemian; 'I can but die so much the sooner.'

'And to imprisonment also,' said the Scot; 'and where then is your boasted freedom?'

'In my thoughts,' said the Bohemian, 'which no chains can bind; while yours, even when your limbs are free, remain fettered by your laws and your superstitions, your dreams of local attachment, and your fantastic visions of civil policy. Such as I are free in spirit when our limbs are chained. You are imprisoned in mind, even when your limbs are most at freedom.'

'Yet the freedom of your thoughts,' said the Scot, 'relieves not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.'

'For a brief time that may be endured,' answered the vagrant, 'and if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect freedom of all.'

Again, when asked in his last hour what are his hopes for the future, the gypsy, after denying the existence of the soul, declares that his anticipations are:

'To be resolved into the elements. * * * My hope and trust and expectation is, that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear, and return under different forms, – the watery particles to streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of Aldebaran and his brethren. In this faith I have lived, and will die in it. Hence! begone! – disturb me no further! I have spoken the last word that mortal ears shall listen to!'

That such a strain as this would be absurd from 'Mr. Petulengro,' or any other of the race as portrayed by Borrow, is evident enough. Whether it is inappropriate, however, in the mouth of one of the first corners of the people in Europe, of direct Hindustanee blood, is another question. Let us examine it.

In his notes to 'Quentin Durward,' Scott declares his belief that there can be little doubt that the first gypsies consisted originally of Hindus, who left their native land when it was invaded by Timur or Tamerlane, and that their language is a dialect of Hindustanee. That the gypsies were Hindus, and outcast Hindus or Pariahs at that, could be no secret to Scott. That he should have made Hayraddin in his doctrines marvellously true to the very life to certain of this class, indicates a degree either of knowledge or of intuition (it may have been either) which is at least remarkable.

The reader has probably learned to consider the Hindu Pariah as a merely wretched outcast, ignorant, vulgar, and oppressed. Such is not, however, exactly their status. Whatever their social rank may be, the Pariahs – the undoubted ancestors of the gypsies – are the authors in India of a great mass of philosophy and literature, embracing nearly all that land has ever produced which is tinctured with independence or wit. In confirmation of which I beg leave to cite the following passages from that extremely entertaining, well-edited, and elegantly published little work, the 'Strange Surprising Adventures of the Venerable Goroo Simple and his Five Disciples':

'The literature of the Hindoos owes but little to the hereditary claimants to the sole possession of divine light and knowledge. On the contrary, with the many things which the Brahmins are forbidden to touch, all science, if left to them alone, would soon stagnate, and clever men, whose genius cannot be held in trammels, therefore soon become outcasts and swell the number of Pariars in consequence of their very pursuit of knowledge. * * * To the writings of the Poorrachchameiyans, a sect of Pariars odious in the eyes of a Brahman, the Tamuls owe the greater part of works on science. * * * To the Vallooran sect of Pariars, particularly shunned by the Brahmans, Hindoo literature is indebted almost exclusively for the many moral poems and books of aphorisms which are its chief pride.

'This class of literature' (satiric humor and fables) 'emanated chiefly from those despised outcasts, the Pariars, the very men who (using keener spectacles than Dr. Robertson, our historian of Ancient India, did, who singularly became the panegyrist of Gentoo subdivisions) saw that to bind human intellect and human energy within the wire fences of Hindoo castes is as impossible as to shut up the winds of heaven in a temple built by man's hand, and boldly thought for themselves.'

Of the literary Vallooran Pariah outcasts and scientific Poorrachchameiyans, we know from the best authority – Father Beschi – that they form society of six degrees or sects, the fifth of which, when five Fridays occur in a month, celebrate it avec de grandes abominations, while the sixth 'admits the real existence of nothing – except, perhaps, God.' This last is a mere guess on the part of the good father. It is beyond conjecture that we have here another of those strange Oriental sects, 'atheistic' in its highest school and identical in its nature with that of the House of Wisdom of Cairo, and with the Templars; and if Scott's gypsy Hayraddin Maugrabin is to be supposed one of that type of Hindu outcasts, which were of all others most hateful to the orthodox Moslem invader, we cannot sufficiently admire the appropriateness with which doctrines which were actually held by the most deeply initiated among the Pariahs were put into his mouth. To have made a merely vulgar, nothing-believing, and as little reflecting gypsy, as philosophical as the wanderer in 'Quentin Durward,' would have been absurd. There is a vigor, an earnestness in his creed, which betrays culture and thought, and which is marvellously appropriate if we regard him as a wandering scion of the outcast Pariah illuminati of India.

Did our author owe this insight to erudition or to poetic intuition? In either case we discover a depth which few would have surmised. It was once said of Scott, that he was a millionaire of genius whose wealth was all in small change – that his scenes and characters were all massed from a vast collection of little details. This would be equivalent to declaring that he was a great novelist without a great idea. Perhaps this is true, but the clairvoyance of genius which seems to manifest itself in the two characters which I have already examined, and the cautious manner in which he has treated them, would appear to prove that he possessed a rarer gift than that of 'great ideas' – the power of controlling them. Such ideas may make reformers, critics, politicians, essayists – but they generally ruin a novelist – and Scott knew it.

A third character belonging to the class under consideration, is Henbane Dwining, the 'pottingar,' apothecary or 'leech,' in the novel of 'The Fair Maid of Perth.'

This man is rather developed by his deeds than his words, and these are prompted by two motives, terrible vindictiveness and the pride of superior knowledge. He is vile from the former, and yet almost heroic from the latter, for it is briefly impossible to make any man intensely self-reliant, and base this self-reliance on great learning in men and books, without displaying in him some elements of superiority. He is so radically bad that by contrast one of the greatest villains in Scottish history, Sir John Ramorney, appears rather gray than black; and yet we dislike him less than the knight, possibly because we know that men of the Dwining stamp, when they have had the control of nations, often do good simply from the dictates of superior wisdom – the wisdom of the serpent – which, no Ramorney ever did. The skill with which the crawling, paltry leech controls his fierce lord; the contempt for his power and pride shown in Dwining's adroit sneers, and above all, the ease with which the latter casts into the shade Ramorney's fancied superiority in wickedness, is well set forth – and such a character could only have been conceived by deep study of the motives and agencies which formed it. To do so, Scott had recourse to the same Oriental source – the same fearful school of atheism which in another and higher form gave birth to the Templar and the gypsy. 'I have studied,' says Dwining, 'among the sages of Granada, where the fiery-souled Moor lifts high his deadly dagger as it drops with his enemy's blood, and avows the doctrine which the pallid Christian practises, though, coward-like, he dare not name it.' His sneers at the existence of a devil, at all 'prejudices,' at religion, above all, at brute strength and every power save that of intellect, are perfectly Oriental – not however of the Oriental Sufi, or of the initiated in the House of Wisdom, whose pantheistic Idealism went hand in hand with a faith in benefiting mankind, and which taught forgiveness, equality, and love, but rather that corrupted Asiatic vanity of wisdom which abounded among the disciples of Aristotle and of Averroes in Spain, and which was entirely material. I err, strictly speaking, therefore, when I speak of this as the same Oriental school, though in a certain sense it had a common origin – that of believing in the infinite power of human wisdom. Both are embraced indeed in the beguiling eritis sicut Deus, 'ye shall be as God,' uttered by the serpent to Eve.

Quite subordinate as regards its position among the actors of the novel, yet extremely interesting in a historical point of view, is the character of Jasper Dryfesdale the steward of the Douglas family, in 'The Abbot.' In this man Scott has happily combined the sentiment of absolute feudal devotion to his superiors with a gloomy fatalism learned 'among the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany.' If carefully studied, Dryfesdale will be found to be, on the whole, the most morally instructive character in the entire range of Scott's writings. In the first place, he illustrates the fact, so little noted by the advocates of loyalty, aristocracy, 'devoted retainers,' and 'faithful vassals,' that all such fidelity carried beyond the balance of a harmony of interests, results in an insensibility to moral accountability. Thus in the Southern States, masters often refer with pride to the fact that a certain negro, who will freely pillage in other quarters, will 'never steal at home.' History shows that the man who surrenders himself entirely to the will of another begins at once to cast on his superior all responsibility for his own acts. Such dependence and evasion is of itself far worse than the bold unbelief which is to the last degree self-reliant; which seeks no substitute, dreads no labor, scorns all mastery, and aims at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Such unbelief may possibly end in finding religious truth after its devious errors, but what shall be said of those who would have men sin as slaves?

Singularly and appropriately allied to a resignation of moral accountability from feudal attachment, is the contemptible and cowardly doctrine of fatalism, which Dryfesdale also professes. It is not with him the philosophic doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance, or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of the Arabian kismet, that from the beginning of time every event was fore-arranged as in a fairy tale, and that all which is, is simply the acting out of a libretto written before the play began – a belief revived in the last century by readers of Leibnitz, who were truer than the great German himself to the consequences of his doctrine, which he simply evaded.[14 - 'Tota hæc humanæ vitæ fabula, quæ universitatem naturæ et generis humani historiam constituit tota prius in intellectu divino præconcepta fuit cum infinitis aliis.' – Leibnitz, Theodicæa, part 11, p. 149.] In coupling this humiliating and superstitious means of evading moral accountability with the same principle as derived from feudal devotion, Scott, consciously or unconsciously, displayed genius, and at the same time indirectly attacked that system of society to which he was specially devoted. So true is it that genius instinctively tends to set forth the truth, be the predilections of its possessor what they may. And indeed, as Scott nowhere shows in any way that he, for his part, regarded the blind fidelity of the steward as other than admirable, it may be that he was guided rather by instinct than will, in thus pointing out the great evil resulting from a formally aristocratic state of society. Such as it is, it is well worth studying in these times, when the principles of republicanism and aristocracy are brought face to face at war among us, firstly in the contest between the South and the North, and secondly in the rapidly growing division between the friends of the Union, and the treasonable 'Copperheads,' who consist of men of selfish, aristocratic tendencies, and their natural allies, the refuse of the population.

It is very unfortunate that the term 'Anabaptists' should have ever been applied to the ferocious fanatics led by John of Leyden, Knipperdolling, and Rothmann, since it has brought discredit on a large sect bearing the same name with which it had in reality even less in common than the historians of the latter imagine. It is not a difficult matter for the mind familiar with the undoubted Oriental origin of the 'heresies' of the middle ages, to trace in the origin at least of the fierce and licentious socialists of Münster the same secret influence which, flowing from Gnostic, Manichæan, or Templar sources, founded the Waldense and Albigense sects, and was afterward perceptible in a branch of the Hussites. At the time of the Reformation their ancient doctrines had subsided into Biblical fanaticism; but the old leaven of revolt against the church, and against all compulsion – keenly sharpened by their experiences, in the recent Peasant's War – was as hot as ever among them. They had no great or high philosophy, but were in all respects chaotic, contradictory, and stormy. Unable to rise to the cultivated and philanthropic feelings which accompanied the skepticism of their remote founders, they based their denial of moral accountability – as narrow and vulgar minds naturally do – on a predestination, which is as insulting to God as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing Him a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial enough to his grovelling nature. So he was willing to believe that 'that which was written of me a million years before I saw the light must be executed by me.' 'I am well taught, and strong in belief,' he says, 'that man does nought for himself; he is but the foam on the billow, which rises, bubbles, and bursts, not by its own effort, but by the mightier impulse of fate which urges him.' And the combination of his two wretched doctrines is well set forth in the passage wherein he tells his mistress that she had no choice as regarded accepting his criminal services. 'You might not choose, lady,' answered the steward. 'Long ere this castle was builded – ay, long ere the islet which sustains it reared its head above the blue water – I was destined to be your faithful slave, and you to be my ungrateful mistress.'

Freethinkers, infidels, and atheists abound in novels, but it is to the credit of Sir Walter Scott that wherever he has introduced a sincere character of this description, he has gone to the very origin for his facts, and then given us the result without pedantry. The four which I have examined are each a curious subject for study, and indicate, collectively and compared, a train of thought which I believe that few have suspected in Scott, notwithstanding his well-known great love for the curious and occult in literature. That he perfectly understood that absurd and vain character, the so-called 'infidel,' whose philosophy is limited to abusing Christianity, and whose real object is to be odd and peculiar, and astonish humble individuals with his wickedness, is most amusingly shown in 'Bletson,' one of the three Commissioners of Cromwell introduced into 'Woodstock.' Scott has drawn this very subordinate character in remarkable detail, having devoted nearly seven pages to its description,[15 - Tickner and Fields' edition of Waverley Novels, Boston, 1858.] evidently being for once carried away by the desire of rendering the personality as clearly as possible, or of gratifying his own fancy. And while no effort is ever made to cast even a shadow of ridicule on the Knight Templar, on Dryfesdale, on the gypsy, or even on the crawling Dwining, he manifestly takes great pains to render as contemptible and laughably absurd as possible this type of the very great majority of modern infidels, who disavow religion because they fear it, and ridicule Christianity from sheer, shallow ignorance. Our own country at present abounds in 'Bletsons,' in conceited, ignorant 'infidel' scribblers of many descriptions, in of all whom we can still trace the cant and drawl of the old-fashioned fanaticism to which they are in reality nearly allied, while they appear to oppose it. For the truth is, that popular infidelity – to borrow Mr. Caudle's simile of tyrants – is only Puritanism turned inside out. We see this, even when it is masked in French flippancy and the Shibboleth of the current accomplishments of literature – it betrays itself by its vindictiveness and conceit, by its cruelty, sarcasms, and meanness – with the infidel as with the bigot. The sincere seeker for truth, whether he wander through the paths of unbelief or of faith, never forgets to love, never courts notoriety, and is neither a satirical court-fool nor a would-be Mephistopheles.

In reflecting on these characters, I am irresistibly reminded of an anecdote illustrating their nature. A friend of mine who had employed a rather ignorant fellow to guide him through some ruins in England, was astonished, as he entered a gloomy dungeon, at the sudden remark, in the hollow voice of one imparting a dire confidence, of: 'I doan't believe in hany God!' 'Don't you, indeed?' was the placid reply. 'Noa,' answered the guide; 'H'I'm a HINFIDEL!' 'Well, I hope you feel easy after it,' quoth my friend.

There is yet another skeptic set forth by Scott, whose peculiarities may be deemed worthy of examination. I refer to Agelastes, the treacherous and hypocritical sage of 'Count Robert of Paris.' In this man we have, however, rather the refined sensualist and elegant scholar who amuses himself with the subtleties of the old Greek philosophy, than a sincere seeker for truth, or even a sincere doubter. His views are fully given in a short lecture of the countess:

'Daughter,' said Agelastes, approaching nearer to the lady, 'it is with pain I see you bewildered in errors which a little calm reflection might remove. We may flatter ourselves, and human vanity usually does so, that beings infinitely more powerful than those belonging to mere humanity are employed daily in measuring out the good and evil of this world, the termination of combats or the fate of empires, according to their own ideas of what is right or wrong, or more properly, according to what we ourselves conceive to be such. The Greek heathens, renowned for their wisdom, and glorious for their actions, explained to men of ordinary minds the supposed existence of Jupiter and his Pantheon, where various deities presided over various virtues and vices, and regulated the temporal fortune and future happiness of such as practised them. The more learned and wise of the ancients rejected such the vulgar interpretation, and wisely, although affecting a deference to the public faith, denied before their disciples in private, the gross fallacies of Tartarus and Olympus, the vain doctrines concerning the gods themselves, and the extravagant expectations which the vulgar entertained of an immortality supposed to be possessed by creatures who were in every respect mortal, both in the conformation of their bodies, and in the internal belief of their souls. Of these wise and good men some granted the existence of the supposed deities, but denied that they cared about the actions of mankind any more than those of the inferior animals. A merry, jovial, careless life, such as the followers of Epicurus would choose for themselves, was what they assigned for those gods whose being they admitted. Others, more bold or more consistent, entirely denied the existence of deities who apparently had no proper object or purpose, and believed that such of them, whose being and attributes were proved to us by no supernatural appearances, had in reality no existence whatever.'

In all this, and indeed in all the character of Agelastes, there is nothing more than shallow scholarship, such as may be found in many of 'the learned' in all ages, whose learning is worn as a fine garment, perhaps as one of comfort, but not as the armor in which to earnestly do battle for life. A contempt for the vulgar, or at best a selfish rendering of life agreeable to themselves, is all that is gathered from such systems of doubt – and this was in all ages the reproach of all Greek philosophy. It was not meant for the multitude nor for the barbarian. It embraced no hope of benefiting all mankind, no scheme for even freeing them from superstition. Such ideas were only cherished by the Orientals, and (though mingled with errors) subsequently and fully by the early Christians. It was in the East that the glorious doctrine of love for all beings, not only for enemies, but for the very fiends themselves, was first proclaimed as essential to perfect the soul – as shown in the beautiful Hindu poem of 'The Buddha's Victory,'[16 - The Poetry of the East. By William Rounseville Alger. Boston. Whittemore, Niles & Hall, 1856.] in which the demon Wassywart, that horror of horrors, whose eyes are clots of blood, whose voice outroars the thunder, who plucks up the sun from its socket the sky, defies the great saint-god to battle:

'The unarmed Buddha mildly gazed at him,
And said in peace: 'Poor fiend, even thee I love.'
Before great Wassywart the world grew dim;
His bulk enormous dwindled to a dove. * * *
– Celestial beauty sat on Buddhas face,
While sweetly sang the metamorphosed dove:
'Swords, rocks, lies, fiends, must yield to moveless love,
And nothing can withstand the Buddha's grace.'

And again, in 'The Secret of Piety' – the secret 'of all the lore which angelic bosoms swell' – we have the same pure faith:

'Whoso would careless tread one worm that crawls the sod,
That cruel man is darkly alienate from God;
But he that lives embracing all that is in love,
To dwell with him God bursts all bounds, below, above.'