1828.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



527 



The hopeless longing for the soft pure air 

 The bed of earth the flesh-worm crawling there 

 The choaking gasp the short and fluttering 



breath 



The last sad hour of life the first of death 

 Another night! and still no succour nigh, 

 No ray of hope no solace but to die! &c. 



Salathiel, 3 vols. 1828 Salathiel, is the 

 ' Wandering Jew' a mighty and myste- 

 rious personage, for the origin of whose 

 singular story we might now search in vain, 

 but which has been exhibited over and over 

 again, built sometimes on wild reports, or 

 the silliest blunders, and sometimes wholly 

 on imagination ; the substance of all which, 

 however, is, that for some offence or other 

 against the Saviour of the World, he was 

 condemned without that last refuge of the 

 miserable the hope of death, to wander 

 for ages upon earth, till the being he had 

 offended, and whose murderer he had been, 

 returned to triumph and for judgment. On 

 this legend Mr. Croly has seized appa- 

 rently with the intention of surveying some 

 of the momentous events that have marked 

 the regions of Christendom, and influenced 

 destinies of men. The story is entitled " of 

 the past, the present, and the future ;" and, 

 therefore, when the mighty grasp of the 

 writer has compassed the past, he will ex- 

 tend it to the present ; and, with the mass 

 of experience thus before him, investing 

 him with a degree of prescience if like 

 causes produce like effects he will specu- 

 late with some prospect of success on the 

 future. The portion now presented to us is 

 limited to the period which comes fairly 

 within the wanderer's natural life, and 

 embraces his family story, together with the 

 stubborn resistance of the Jews to the om- 

 nipotence of the Romans, the capture of 

 Jerusalem, and the destruction of the tem- 

 ple ; and we know no one of the present 

 day, now that Maturin is gone, so well 

 able, from his professional studies, from his 

 full acquaintance with the history and pecu- 

 liarities of the Jews, the vigour of his un- 

 derstanding, the activity of his fancy, and 

 the fertility and solemnity of his language, 

 to give effect to a set of circumstances, 

 which have in them so much of the extra- 

 ordinary, and which so often touch upon the 

 romantic. 



The basis of the story is studiously wrapt 

 in obscurity. Salathiel is represented as the 

 priest, most conspicuous in urging on the 

 maddening multitude to demand the cruci- 

 fixion of Christ, by whom he was marked, 

 and addressed in the words tarry thou 

 till I come words, which shot conviction 

 thrillingly into his bosom, that it was his 

 destiny never to die, but to be subject to an 

 endless succession of calamity, and be cut 

 off from the common charities of domestic 

 connection. The latter part of his convic- 

 tion did not, however, immediately take 

 place in all its severity. He has a wife, and 

 two daughters, all most amiable, most 

 lovely, most accomplished besides a son, 

 whom he loses in childhood, but afterwards, 



under circumstances sufficiently extraor- 

 dinary, recovers. He is himself a man of 

 distinction in Naphtali, and by succession 

 the prince of his tribe. By temperament 

 he is ardent, active, and ambitious ; and, 

 by circumstances, especially the desperation 

 of his peculiar destiny, impatient of repose, 

 and ever in imperative need of something 

 to drown his torturing recollections. To 

 the fatal crime he had committed, he was 

 led, not from malignity of spirit, but by the 

 vehemence of prejudices ; and those preju- 

 dices were not a whit shaken by what might 

 have been expected to follow, but which did 

 not a conviction of the divinity, or, at least, 

 of the divine commission of the being he 

 had been most instrumental in destroying. 

 He continued a Jew, passionately devoted 

 to the faith of his fathers, and resolutely 

 bent on vindicating the independence of his 

 country. By a fiery and irrepressible zeal 

 was he impelled to encounter the Romans, 

 to defeat their presumptuous hopes, and re* 

 store again the lost splendour of Israel. 



At first, the deep consciousness of his 

 crime, and the sense of its immeasurable 

 punishment, overwhelm him ; he abandons 

 the priesthood, and quits Jerusalem with 

 his family. In the tumults of the elements 

 which followed upon the crucifixion, when 

 the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent, he 

 was struck to the ground, and with him his 

 wife and child ; and, in a state of insen- 

 sibility, he was conveyed, no longer to the re- 

 sidence of the priests in the Hill country of 

 Hebron, but to the north, where his family 

 connexions lay, and where, eventually, on 

 the return of the jubilee, his alienated pro- 

 perty reverted to him. Here, in a state of 

 inaction, and retirement, he continued for 

 some years, when, at last, he resolved at the 

 passover, to go again towards Jerusalem ; 

 but, on his arrival, he refuses to enter ; and 

 wandering along the brook Kedron, till he 

 reaches the shores of the Dead Sea, he en- 

 counters an extraordinary person, who, after 

 exhibiting, in the style of a conjurer, some 

 feats of activity and strength, declares him- 

 self to be Antiochus Epiphanes one of the 

 evil spirits of the dead, who were permitted, 

 from time to time, to revisit the ' glimpses 

 of the moon,' and by whom Judea had been, 

 for some years previously, unusually haunt- 

 ed. Playing the part of a second Satan, 

 Antiochus snatches up Salathiel, and, with 

 the speed of an eagle, carries him upwards 

 to a point, from which he overlooks Jeru- 

 salem, and beholds the tower of Antonia, 

 then in the power of the Romans, wrapt in 

 flames. Left suddenly by Antiochus, he 

 rushes, sword in hand, to take part in 

 the bloody and the burning strife ; he rallies, 

 leads, and triumphs ; the Romans are 

 routed and expelled, and Jerusalem is 

 cleared of every idolatrous foot ; and Sala- 

 thiel has the satisfaction of rescuing Elea- 

 zar, his own brother, the originator of the 

 attack, and of checking, somewhat, the rage 

 and superfluous cruelty of the Jews. 



Conspicuous as he had been in the con- 



