Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/133

Rh be flattered by one of this nature. For she does not introduce us to a true Jew at all. Her ideas were based upon that rare and beautiful character Moses Mendelssohn, a character as little typical of the Jewish as of any other race or religious creed, but common to all men who think and feel philosophically and have raised themselves above the petty prejudices of mankind. This was as much as to say that only a Jew who was no Jew was admirable and estimable. And even his daughter Berenice, whom we are led to regard throughout as a Jewess, is finally discovered to have been born of a Christian mother, and christened in her youth, so that her lover Harrington can marry her without any sacrifice to his social and racial prejudices. This is weak indeed, since the whole purpose of the story was to overcome the baseless dislike Harrington had from childhood entertained for the mere name of Jew. It would, therefore, have been far more to the purpose had his prejudices been really, and not only apparently, overcome. The truth is that Miss Edgeworth herself was a lady not free from prejudices; and a regard for the opinion of the world, for birth and social station, was one of these. At the eleventh hour she probably could not reconcile herself to letting her hero, a man of good society, marry a Spanish Jewess; and since he had shown himself willing to do so, carried away by his deep and sincere feeling, she doubtless held that he had done enough, and so terrible a fate must be averted from his head.

The story could not, and did not, satisfy Miss Mordecai's requirements, though she accepted it is an attempt at making amends. But the authoress herself recognised, in later life, that her friend "had no reason to be satisfied with it, as the Jewess turns