all, they were compelled to go out of the world. It was necessary,
moreover, in depicting the poor man's patroness, to show the
material on which she worked; and those who know the poor, know also
that we can no more judge truly of their characters in the presence
of their benefactors, than we can tell by seeing clay in the
potter's hands what it was in its native pit. These scenes have,
therefore, been laid principally in Elizabeth's absence, in order to
preserve their only use and meaning.

So rough and common a life-picture of the Middle Age will, I am
afraid, whether faithful or not, be far from acceptable to those who
take their notions of that period principally from such exquisite
dreams as the fictions of Fouque, and of certain moderns whose
graceful minds, like some enchanted well,


In whose calm depths the pure and beautiful
Alone are mirrored,


are, on account of their very sweetness and simplicity, singularly
unfitted to convey any true likeness of the coarse and stormy Middle
Age. I have been already accused, by others than Romanists, of
profaning this whole subject--i.e. of telling the whole truth,
pleasant or not, about it. But really, time enough has been lost in
ignorant abuse of that period, and time enough also, lately, in
blind adoration of it. When shall we learn to see it as it was?--
the dawning manhood of Europe--rich with all the tenderness, the
simplicity, the enthusiasm of youth--but also darkened, alas! with
its full share of youth's precipitance and extravagance, fierce