By WALLACE BRUCE.

“The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant northern home, and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or as it is called, the Lake Asphalites, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters.”

This is the graphic opening of “The Talisman.” The steel clad pilgrim was entering upon that great plain, once watered even as the Garden of the Lord, now an arid and sterile wilderness, sloping away to the Dead Sea, which hides beneath its sluggish waves the once proud cities of Sodom and Gomorrah;—a dark mass of water “Which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and sends no tribute to the ocean.” It was a scene of desolation still testifying to the just wrath of the Almighty. As in the days of Moses, “The whole land was brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.” The first sentence of the chapter revealed the descriptive and artistic power of the novelist, for the desolation is made more desolate by the introduction of the solitary horseman, journeying slowly through the flitting sand, under the noontide splendor of the eastern sun.

Almost a century has passed since the triumph of the first crusade. The Latin Kingdom, founded by its leaders, had lasted only eighty-eight years. Jerusalem is again in the hands of the Saracens. The crescent gleams on the Mosque of St. Omar. The cross has been torn from her temples, her shrines profaned, and the worshipers of the Holy Sepulcher murdered or exiled. The second crusade had been a failure, and its history a series of disasters. Thousands perished in the long march across Asia Minor. Those who reached Palestine undertook the siege of Damascus, but the attempt was disastrous. In 1187 a powerful leader of the East appeared in the high-souled and chivalrous Saladin. By wise counsel he united the factions of the Mohammedans, which had been at variance for two hundred years; and on the arrival of the third crusade, with which event we are now dealing, he was enabled to present a solid front of warriors “like unto the sand of the desert in multitude.”

The land, where “peace and good will to men” had been proclaimed by the voices of angels, and emphasized by the blessed words of the Son of God, was again converted into a vast tournament field for the armies of Europe and Asia: aye more, even in the mountain passes that guard the Holy City, the mission of the crusaders was sacrificed to petty insults and rivalries. Richard the Lion-hearted and King Philip of France were repeating the old story of Achilles and Agamemnon. The military orders of the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of St. John, which had grown up in Jerusalem, founded as fraternities devoted to works of mercy in behalf of poor pilgrims, had become powerful rivals of each other and the clergy, and by intrigue and dissension purposely fomented the discord. According to the historian Michaud, “On the one side were the French, the German, the Templars and the Genoese; on the other the English, the Pisans, and the Knights of St. John.”

These are the historical circumstances with which Scott has to deal; and it is on a mission from such a council, made up of discordant factions, convened during the sickness of Richard, that we find the Knight of the Red Cross, or as he is afterward styled, Kenneth the Scot, bearing a message to the celebrated Hermit of Engaddi. His adventures by the way are as romantic as any recorded in the Knights of the Round-Table; for, as he directed his course toward a cluster of palm trees, he saw suddenly emerge therefrom a Saracen chief mounted on a fleet Arabian horse. As they drew near each other they prepared for battle, each after the manner of his own country. “On the desert,” according to an Eastern proverb, “no man meets a friend.” The heavy armor of the crusader and his powerful horse are more than an even match for the wily Saracen. The Scottish knight might have been likened in the conflict to a bold rock in the sea, and the swift assaults of the Eastern warrior to the waves dashing against it only to be broken into foam. After a long struggle, which was worthy of a larger audience, the Saracen calls a truce, and the Mohammedan and Christian, so lately in deadly conflict, make their way side by side, each respecting the other’s courage, to the well under the clustered palms.

The student of history will find in the description of this hand-to-hand conflict an object-lesson of the garb and manners of the Eastern and Western races; and will learn more in the conversation that follows, as they partake of their scanty meal, of the sentiments and customs of the hostile races than can be gathered from the pages of any history with which I am acquainted: for Sir Walter had the marvelous faculty of absorbing history. He saw everything so vividly that he was able to reproduce it in living forms. As we read his description, we sit with them under the palms; we hear them now responding in courtesy, and again in sharp discussion, as allusion is made to their respective religions or modes of life; and, as they resume their journey, we feel grateful to the novelist for the beautiful figure which he puts in the mouth of the Scottish knight in answer to the Saracen’s boast of harem-life as contrasted with a Christian household.

We find both soldiers courteous in conversation, and their example teaches a good lesson to modern controversy; but the “courtesy of the Christian seemed to flow rather from a good natured sense of what was due to others; that of the Moslem, from a high feeling of what was to be expected from himself. The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful and decorous;” he might have been compared to “his sheeny and crescent-shaped saber, with its narrow and light, but bright and keen, Damascus blade, contrasted with the long and ponderous Gothic war-sword which was flung unbuckled on the same sod.”

They pursue their march to the grotto of the Hermit of Engaddi; a man respected alike by Christian and Mohammedan; revered by the Latins for his austere devotion, and by the Arabs on account of his symptoms of insanity, which they ascribed to inspiration. The hermit, once a crusader, was the man whom Kenneth was to meet. He delivers his message; but at night, while the Saracen slept, Kenneth is conducted to a subterraneous, but elegantly carved chapel, where he meets by chance with the noble sister of King Richard, who with Richard’s newly wedded wife, had come hither to pray for the king’s recovery. She drops a rose at the knight’s feet confirming the approbation which her smiles had already expressed to him in camp, and the story of true love, not destined to run smoothly, is fairly commenced. But as with “Count Robert of Paris,” “The Talisman” is not so much a romance as a picture of the strife and jealousy of haughty and rival leaders. Its value, as a historical novel, lies in the portrayal of these discordant elements.

We may read the best history of the crusades, page by page, line by line, only to forget the next month, or the next year, everything save the issue of the long struggle; but “The Talisman,” by its wondrous reality, makes a lasting impression upon our minds. We see Richard tossing upon his couch, impatient of his fever and protracted delays. We see the Marquis of Montserrat, and the Grand Master of the Knights Templar walking together in close-whispered conspiracy. We see Leopold, the Grand Duke of Austria, lifting his own banner, with overweening pride, by the side of England’s standard. We see Richard dashing aside the attendants of his sick bed, half-clad, rushing forth to avenge the insult, splintering the staff, and trampling upon the Austrian flag. We stand with Kenneth under the starlight, guarding alone the dignity of England’s banner, but decoyed away in an unlucky hour by the ring of King Richard’s sister, which had been obtained by artifice. We see the flag stolen in that fatal absence, and the noble knight condemned to death, to be saved only by miracle from the fierce wrath of Richard. He is given as a present to the Arabian physician whose art had restored the king to health. We see him again with Richard in the disguise of a Nubian slave. We see a strolling Saracen with poisoned dagger attempting the life of Richard, but saved by the faithful Kenneth. We find Richard considering in his mind the giving of his royal sister in marriage to Saladin; an affair which fortunately needed the lady’s consent, who had in her veins too much of the proud Plantagenet blood to know the meaning of compulsion. We see the tournament which decided the treachery of Conrad, and the triumph of Kenneth, who turns out to be no other than the Earl of Huntingdon, heir of the Scottish throne. The comrade of Kenneth, and the physician who waited upon the king, chances to be the same person, and no less renowned a hero than the Emperor Saladin, who sends as a nuptial present to Kenneth and Edith Plantagenet the celebrated talisman by which he had wrought so many notable cures; which, according to Scott, is still in existence in the family of Sir Simon of Lee.

This tale of the crusaders is so complete that we need after closing the volume only a few lines of history to complete the record. The city of Ptolemais was captured after a three years’ siege. More than one hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought under its walls. Both parties were animated by religious zeal. It is said that the King of Jerusalem marched to battle with the books of the Evangelists borne before him; and that Saladin often paused upon the field of battle to recite a prayer, or read a chapter from the Koran. Philip finally returns to France. Richard remains in command of one hundred thousand soldiers. He conquers the Saracens in battle, repairs the fortifications of Jaffa and Ascalon, but in the intoxication of pleasure forgets the conquest of Jerusalem. His victories were fruitless. He obtained from Saladin merely a truce of three years and eight months, “which insured to pilgrims the right of entering Jerusalem untaxed,” and, without fulfilling his promise of striking his lance against the gates of the Holy City, sets off on his homeward journey, to be taken captive and held a prisoner in a Tyrolese castle. In brief the history of the Third Crusade is that of a house divided against itself.

As “The Betrothed” brought us back from Constantinople and Palestine to Merrie England, so “Ivanhoe” transports the reader, and some of the prominent actors of the drama, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the pleasant district of the West Riding of Yorkshire, watered by the river Don, “where flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.”

The prominent historical features which Scott illustrates in the romantic story of “Ivanhoe” are the domestic and civil relations existing between the Saxon and the Norman about the year 1196, when the return of Richard the First from Palestine and captivity was an event rather hoped for than expected; and an event not hoped for by King John and his followers.

The Saxon spirit had been well nigh subdued by the strict and unjust laws imposed by the Norman kings. For one hundred and thirty years Norman-French had been the language of the court, the language of law, of chivalry and justice. The laws of the chase and the curfew,—and many others unknown to the Saxon constitution,—had been placed upon the necks of the inhabitants of the soil. With few exceptions the race of Saxon princes had been extirpated; and it was not until the reign of Edward III. that England became thoroughly united as one people. The English language at the close of the twelfth century was not yet born. The Saxon mother and Norman father were not yet wedded; the two languages were gradually getting acquainted with each other; or, as Scott has logically expressed it, “the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished has been so happily blended together, and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.” In the first chapter—and it is always well to read carefully the first chapter of Scott—we are introduced to a swine-herd, born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood, one of the few powerful Saxon families existing in England at the time of our story. He is attended by a domestic clown, or jester, maintained at that time in the houses of the wealthy. With an art and unity like Shakspere, Scott emphasizes at the very outset the chief historic feature of his story, by putting the following conversation in the mouths of these Saxon menials:

The third chapter brings together a strange gathering under the roof of the hospitable Cedric: Brian de Bois Gilbert, a haughty Templar; Prior Aymer, of free and jovial character; a poor Palmer, just returned from the Holy Land, and a Jew known as Isaac of York; all journeying on their way to a tournament to be held a few miles distant at Ashby de la Zouche. Lady Rowena, descended from the noble line of Alfred, graced the table with her presence, a ward destined by Cedric, but not by fate, to be the wife of Athelstane,—a Saxon descended from Edward the Confessor: in the furtherance of which idea his only son had been exiled, when it became known that he aspired to the hand of the Saxon beauty.

At the tournament the remaining characters of the drama are introduced: King John, with his retinue; Richard the Lion-Hearted, under the disguise of the “Black Knight;” Rebecca, the Jewess; the proud baron Front de Boeuf; Robin Hood, the brave outlaw, under the name of Loxley; and Ivanhoe, the poor pilgrim, who wins the prize at the tournament and crowns Rowena Queen of Beauty. At the close of the second day’s tournament, in which Ivanhoe is again successful, a letter is handed to King John with the brief sentence, “Take heed to yourself, for the devil is unchained.” It was like the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace, and proclaimed the end of his kingdom.

Cedric, Rowena, Isaac, Rebecca, Athelstane and Ivanhoe depart their several ways from the tournament, but are captured and taken to Front de Boeuf’s castle. Cedric escapes in the guise of a monk. The castle is stormed, and now occurs one of the most dramatic pictures in the pages of romantic literature, destined to reveal to all time the undying hate between the Saxon and the Norman. A Saxon woman, by name Ulrica, had lived for years in Front de Boeuf’s castle. She had seen her father and seven brothers killed in defending their home, but she “remained to administer ignominiously to the murderers of her family. She used the seductions of her beauty to arm the son against the father; she heated drunken revelry into murderous broil, and stained with a parricide the banqueting hall of the conquerors.” She had sold body and soul to obtain revenge for Norman cruelties; and now, grown old in servitude, incensed by the contempt of her masters, she determines upon a deed, which will make the ears of men tingle while the name of Saxon is remembered. She fires the castle and appears on a turret in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song. “Her long, dishevelled grey hair flows back from her uncovered head; the inebriated delight of gratified vengeance contends in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandishes the distaff which she holds in her hand, as if she were one of the fatal sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gives way, and she perishes in the flames which consume her tyrant.”

There is another historic feature of the times emphasized in this romance: the oppression of the Jews in England during these cruel and adventurous times. The character of the race is vividly portrayed in Isaac of York, in which masterly delineation Scott seems truer to nature than Shakspere in the character of Shylock. Rebecca, his noble and beautiful daughter, is the type of all that is pure and womanly. Her words have the eloquence of the poets and prophets of old: “Know proud knight,” she says, “we number names amongst us to which your boasted Northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar—names that ascend far back to those high times when the Divine Presence shook the mercy seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendor from no earthly prince, but from the awful Voice, which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the vision; such were the princes of the house of Jacob; now such no more. They are trampled down like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways; yet there are those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall be the daughter of Isaac, the son of Adonikam. Farewell! I envy not thy blood-won honors; I envy not thy barbarous descent from northern heathens; I envy not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.”

The description of Friar Tuck entertaining King Richard in disguise is in Scott’s happiest vein; and Robin Hood, with his bold outlaws, shares the honors gracefully with knights and nobles. But it is alike unnecessary and unprofitable to attempt a condensation of “Ivanhoe.” No outline can convey the beauty of a finished picture. It is not to be taken at second hand. It is only for us to indicate its relation to history; and it will suffice to say that King Richard was gladly welcomed by the English people, and that Ivanhoe was wedded to the beautiful Rowena.

But, do I hear the reader ask, what becomes of the fair Jewess? Scott has answered the question so beautifully in his preface that I borrow his own words—a passage to my mind unsurpassed in English prose: “The character of the fair Jewess found so much favor in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, ‘Verily, virtue has had its reward.’ But a glance on the great picture of life will show that the duties of self-denial and the sacrifice of passion to principle are seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty produces on their own reflections a more adequate recompense in the form of that peace which the world can not give or take away.”