generous among themselves, considering that the laws against lending on usury did not apply to Gentiles. Thus, when money was extremely scarce, they were the only bankers except the Lombards. But their existence was extremely precarious, and perfectly fulfilled the prophecies in Deuteronomy, that their lives should never be safe day nor night. Fanaticism held itself bound to revenge their ancient unbelief on them, and their wealth invited plunder. Every fresh crusade began with an attack on the Jews, and the crass ignorance of the times imagined that they captured little children to sacrifice in their ritual. This strange notion respecting a people who regard death and blood as absolute defilement, still survives in the more ignorant countries in Europe in our own day. In these early Middle Ages the Jews were only permitted by the kings to live on sufferance; they were held as royal property, and acted as sponges, absorbing wealth, which the sovereign could squeeze out of them at any. time without return; and in lawless times, the barons held them as fair game. . Such an act of cruelty of extracting the teeth of a captive Jew till he had paid enough for his ransom occurred in the reign of King Stephen, when nobles of the Front de Bœuf type were far more frequent than after the well-ordered government of Henry II. Several old towns still have Jewry streets, showing the quarter once inhabited by this race previous to the reign of Edward I., when they were banished from England. They did not return in any numbers till the seventeenth century. The picture of the corruption and violence of the Templars belongs to a later time. This Order had been instituted after the First Crusade. There had long been monks at Jerusalem, who received travellers and tended the sick pilgrims at their hospital. These, in the need of strong arms to defend the city, were also enrolled as soldiers, and became the Order of Knights Hospitallers. Their efficiency led to the institution of another Order, vowed to the defence of the Temple, and thus called Knights Templars. Their headquarters were at Jerusalem, and afterwards at Acre; but they also had estates throughout England, France, Spain, and Italy, where their novices were trained in arms, and which supplied the garrisons in Palestine with youths bred up free from the enervating influences of climate. Both Orders made noble birth an essential qualification for complete brotherhood and knighthood, and thus considerable haughtiness was fostered among them. The Templars, who had not the softening influence of hospital work, were the most overbearing. When Acre was taken, and the Crusades ended, the Hospitallers wisely made a fresh home in Rhodes, and became the protectors of Christian travellers from Mahometan pirates; but the Templars remained in their preceptories in Europe, and had an ill name for pride, avarice, and profligacy. Brian de Bois Guilbert is more like a Templar of the thirteenth than of the twelfth century; but popular renown laid to the charge of the Knights horrible cruelty and sorcery, said to have been learned in the East. Taking advantage of these reports, Philip the Fair of France, envious of their wealth, obtained the sanction of a subservient Pope to the utter destruction of the Order. The frightful crimes laid to their charge were confessed by a few under torture, and though retractations immediately followed on the cessation of the agony, enough had been said to answer the purpose of their enemies, and the Order of the Temple was extinguished in blood and flame in the year 1340. It is out of these varied materials that this most unrivalled web of romance has been woven. We are afraid we must add that Rowena was never an Anglo-Saxon name, and that the story of the fair daughter of Hengist offering the cup to the British Vortigern has been proved to be a late Welsh invention, adopted by uncritical historians. Also Desdichado, the title assumed by Ivanhoe, does not mean in Spanish disinherited, but merely unfortunate. IVANHOE. IN CHAPTER FIRST. Thus communed these; while to their lowly dome, With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries. POPE'S ODYSSEY. N that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Wharncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song. Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced into some degree of subjection to the Crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the Civil Wars of the Roses: These were wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster in the fifteenth century for the sovereignty of England. The Lan castrian badge was a red, and the Yorkist a white rose. feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending. The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves, by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbors, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land. A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual Feudal tyranny: Under the feudal law each estate was held from the Crown by its tenant on condition of military service at the royal call. Duke William of Normandy: In 1066 the Normans under Duke William Invaded England and gained possession of the country bý a desperate battle fought at Hastings, in which Harold, the English king, was killed, and William obtained the crown. |