" Do you not, I say, perceive that we
are come to the end of our history; and, after a quantity of rapid and
terrific fighting, brilliant change of scenery, and songs, appropriate
or otherwise, are bringing our hero and heroine together? Who wants a
long scene at the last? Mammas are putting the girls' cloaks and boas
on; papas have gone out to look for the carriage, and left the
box-door swinging open, and letting in the cold air: if there WERE any
stage-conversation, you could not hear it, for the scuffling of the
people who are leaving the pit. See, the orange-women are preparing to
retire. To-morrow their play-bills will be as so much waste-paper--so
will some of our masterpieces, woe is me: but lo! here we come to Scene
the last, and Valencia is besieged and captured by the Christians.
Who is the first on the wall, and who hurls down the green standard of
the Prophet? Who chops off the head of the Emir Aboo What-d'ye-call'im,
just as the latter has cut over the cruel Don Beltran de Cuchillay &c.?
Who, attracted to the Jewish quarter by the shrieks of the inhabitants
who are being slain by the Moorish soldiery, and by a little boy by the
name of Ben Davids, who recognizes the knight by his shield, finds Isaac
of York egorge on a threshold, and clasping a large back-kitchen key?
Who but Ivanhoe--who but Wilfrid? "An Ivanhoe to the rescue," he bellows
out; he has heard that news from little Ben Davids which makes him sing.
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