to action; but Lara turns disgusted from a world which to him has neither an illusion nor a pleasure. Marmion, on the contrary, desires to pursue his career of worldly advancement: he looks forward to increased riches and power, and indulges in no misanthropic misgivings as to the worth of the acquisition when once gained. Both are attended by a Page—that favourite creation of the olden dramatists; Byron's is little more than the shadowy but graceful outline: Scott has worked out his creation truly and severely. The Pages in the old drama are entirely poetical creations; they occupy the debatable ground between the fanciful and the existing; they belong exclusively to the romantic in literature. They could only have been fancied when poetry delighted to hold love a creed as well as a passion. The heart called up the ideal to redeem the real, and an attachment was elevated by disinterestedness and moral beauty. There is none of this high-toned imagination in the classic fictions. Women were then considered as articles of property. The
Seven lovely captives of the Lesbian line,
Skill'd in each art, unmatch'd in form divine—
with whom Agamemnon seeks to propitiate the wrath of Achilles—hold an inferior place to the "twice ten vases of refulgent gold"—or to the twelve race-horses destined to form part of the offering. Achilles, though he protests that he loves the "beautiful captive of his spear," yet, not only parts with her, but, what would almost have been worse to a woman, parts with her without an adieu, and she is received again in silent indifference. She departs without a farewell, and returns with out a welcome. Briseis, however, loses ground in our sympathy, by her lamentation over the body of Patroclus:—
"The first loved consort of my virgin bed,
Before these eyes in fatal battle bled:
Thy friendly hand uprear'd me from the plain,
And dried my sorrows for a husband slain.
Achilles' care you promised I should prove,
The first, the dearest partner of his love."
Certainly the promise of a second husband may be very effective consolation for the loss of the first; still it says little for the delicacy or the constancy of the lady who was so consoled. But Christianity brought its own heaven to the things of earth; every passion was refined, and every affection exalted. Only under the purifying influence of that inward world to which it gave light, could sentiment have had its birth—and sentiment is the tenth Muse and the fourth Grace of modern poetry. But in the description of Constance there also is that strong perception of the actual, which is Scott's most marked characteristic. He paints her exactly what in all probability she would have been; he works out the severe lesson of retribution and of degradation. What is the current of Marmion's mind, when
"Constance, late betray'd and scorn'd,
All lovely on his soul return'd:
Lovely, as when, at treacherous call,
She left her convent's peaceful wall;
