pursued the hapless Tam O'Shanter, clutching us in ghastly arms,
clinging to us with grim and ghoulish tenacity.

Viewing the character through the genteel crystal of nineteenth century
civilization, they are all barbarous, unnatural, intensified; but
considering the age in which they lived--the tendencies of that age, the
gods they worshipped, the practices in which they indulged,--they are
all true to life, perfect in the depiction of their natures. Spendius is
a true Greek, crafty, lying, deceitful, ungrateful. Hamilcar needs no
novelist to crystallize his character in words, he always remains the
same Hamilcar of history, so it is with Hann; but to Flanbert alone are
we indebted for the hideous realism of his external aspect. Matho is a
dusky son of Libya,--fierce, passionate, resentful, unbridled in his
speech and action, swept by the hot breath of furious love as his native
sands are swept by the burning simoon. Salammbo, cold and strange
delving deep in the mysticism of the Carthaginian gods, living apart
from human passions in her intense love for the goddess, Tanit;
Salammbo, in the earnest excess of her religious fervor, eagerly
accepting the mission given her by the puzzled Saracharabim; Salammbo,
twining the gloomy folds of the python about her perfumed limbs;
Salammbo, resisting, then yielding to the fierce love of Matho;
Salammbo, dying when her erstwhile lover expires; Salammbo, in all her
many phases reminds us of some early Christian martyr or saint, though
the sweet spirit of the Great Teacher is hidden in the punctual devotion
to the mysterious rites of Tanit. She is an inexplicable mixture of the
tropical exotic and the frigid snow-flower,--a rich and rare growth that
attracts and repulses, that interests and absorbs, that we
admire--without loving, detest--without hating.