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116 evil; in the ill-fated Black Dwarf, the kind warm heart remains the same—under the pang of disappointment, and the disguise of misanthropy. The woman that he loved is gone down to her early grave, and her death breaks the only tie that binds him to his kind; but "we have all of us one human heart," and the lonely and forgotten misanthrope still feels that he is accessible to emotion. Isabel Vere is the daughter of the beloved one—her whose happiness he bought at the price of his own; her sorrow has yet power on a heart that strives to harden itself in vain. The Black Dwarf is not among my favourites; the pity felt for the poor recluse is too painful—too painful, because hopeless. There is a mark upon him which parts him from his kind; and we never feel that more than when he is in the very act of serving them. Take the interview between him and Isabel Vere, which is among Scott's most dramatic situations. In spite of his assumed harshness, his heart is beating with warm and human emotions; the remembrance of his ill-fated, but long-enduring attachment, pity, and the resolve to assist, are all struggling together; yet what is the involuntary effect on his visitor? fear, distrust, and aversion. Every kindness conferred by the Dwarf must have brought with it the "late remorse of love."

Owing independence, security, and domestic happiness to her strange protector, it must have been