• NINA BALATICA.*
IF criticism be not a delusion from the very bottom, this pleasant little story is written by Mr. Anthony Trollope. We have nt› external evidence for saying so, and there is the presumption against it that Mr. Trollope's name is worth a great deal in mere- money value to the sale of any book. Still, no one who knows- his style at all can read three pages of this tale without detecting him as plainly as if he were present in the flesh. Indeed, the present writer has applied what the scientific men call the best test of scientific knowledge, —the power of prediction given by the hypothesis that Nina Balatka is written by Mr. Trollope. The said to himself, 'if it is written by Mr. Trollope, I shall soon meet with the phrase, "made his way," as applied to walking where there is no physical difficulty or embarrassment, but only a certain moral hesitation as to the end and aim of the walking in question,' and behold within a page of the point at which the silent- remark was made, came the very phrase in the peculiar sense indicated. And of such test-phrases we could indicate a dozen or so which, as far as we know, are found in Mr. Anthony Trollope's. stories, and in those alone.
We do not know why the eminent novelist in question should have been .unwilling to give his name to this little tale. It contains, to. be sure, none of his English store of experience of society, and not. much even of the social nuances of the country he describes ; and its strong point is not Mr. Trollope's strongest point, namely,. manners subtly described with a flavour of satirical humour ; but for all that, and perhaps in consequence of the absence of this illimitable subject on which he refines so skilfully, there is a force in the main idea of the talc, and a grace in the picturesque framework of Prague scenery and customs, which adequately supply the place of the author's usual skill in tracing the re- finements of English social habits. Most eminent novelists have felt, we suppose, at some time or other in their lives, a strong fascination in the subject which Sir Walter Scott took as the basis of his story in Ivanhoe, the struggle between love and that feeling, half of caste contempt, half of religious horror, which used to exist in old times between the Christians and the Jews. The intensity of Jewish pride in the midst of national • Allow Laraika. Ti.. Story of a Maiden of Prague. 2 vole. Lyndon : Idockwood. humiliation has always given a grandeur to figures such as Scott's Rebecca, and where this is tempered by struggle with a passion for one of the oppressors' race, you have all the highest conditions of true romance without any unreality. Our author, with a true feel- ing for his own characteristic power, though he has taken the same general subject for his story, has taken it in its most modern shape, making Prague, where the old distinction between Jew and Chris- tian still lingers in very much of its old intensity, the scene of his story, and showing us both the Jewish and the Christian feeling of alienation in its paralysis and decadence, fallen from its old persecuting fervour and its religious fanaticism, to mere social prejudice and religious scruple. He has so far varied the tale, too, as to make a Christian girl (a Bohemian) fall in love with a Jewish merchant and money-lender of Prague, with whom her father has business, and so interfere with the hopes of the Jewess —our author's Rebecca—to whom the fathers of both had intended that he should engage himself. The scene in which Rebecca Loth, the Jewess, appeals to Nina Balatka, the Bohemian (and Christian), heroine of the story, not to sacrifice her lover's position among the Jews of Prague, by persisting in an engagement which must deprive Anton '1'rendellsohn of the confidence and regard of his own people, is one of great force and not a little pathos. Re- becca's pride and boldness and resolute defiance of all the motives for glossing over the truth, the unshrinking way in which she avows her own recent and scarcely extinguished hopes of marrying Anton Trendellsohn, the graphic minuteness of phrase with which at the same time she declares her knowledge of his profound passion for the girl with whom she is conversing, the complete absence of reserves even in language, the full, bold eye, as it were, which she fixes on delicacies of sentiment which any other girl would pass over with an allusion, are all made so as to bring out the Jewess, and the contrast between the Jewess and the Bohemian girl, with remarkable power. Scott's Rebecca is not more effec- tively drawn in any one scene than this Jewess of Prague :— "Rebecca was not dressed now as she had been dressed on that gala occasion when we saw her in the Jews' quarter. Then she had been as smart as white muslin and bright ribbons and velvet could make her. Now ehe was clad almost entirely in black, and over her shoulders she wore a dark shawl, drawn closely round her neck. But she had on her head, now as then, that 'peculiar Hungarian hat which looks almost like a coronet in front, and gives an aspect to the girl who wears it half defiant and half attractive ; and there were there, of coarse, the long, glossy, black earls, and the dark-blue eyes, and the turn of the face, which
was so completely Jewish in its hard, bold, almost repellent beauty
We are not ungrateful to you for coming among 'us and knowing us,' said Rebecca. Then there was a slight pause, for Nina hardly knew what to say to her visitor. But Rebecca continued to speak. We hear that in other countries the prejudice against us is dying away, and that Christians stay with Jews in their houses, and Jews with Christians, eating with them and drinking with them. I fear it will never be so in Prague.'—' And why not in Prague? I hope it may. Why should we not do in Prague as they do elsewhere ?'—' Ah ! the feeling is too firmly settled here. We have our own quarter, and live altogether apart. A Christian here will hardly walk with a Jew, unless it be from counter to counter, or from bank to bank. As for their living together—or even
eating in the same room—do you ever see it ?'" " ' I have some to you now,' said Rebecca Loth, 'to say a few words to you about Anton Trandellsohn. I hope you will not refuse to listen.'—' That will depend on what you say.'—` Do you think it will be for his good to marry a Christian ?'—' I shall leave him to judge of that,' replied Nina,
sharply 'But how will it be with him ? Can you ever be happy if you have been the cause of ruin to your husband ?' Nina was again silent for a while, sitting with her face turned altogether away from the Jewess. Then she rose suddenly from her chair, and, facing round almost fiercely upon the other girl, asked a question which came from the fullness of her heart And you—you yourself, what is it that
you intend to do ? Do you wish to marry him I do,' said Rebecca, bearing Nina's gaze without dropping hor own eyes for a moment. I do. I do wish to be the wife of Anton Trendellsohn.'—' Then you shall never have your wish—never. He loves me, and me only. Ask him,
and he will tell you I have asked him, and he has told me so.' There was something so serious, so sad, and so determined in the man- ner of the young Jewess, that it almost cowed Nina—almost drove her to yield before her visitor. 'If he has told you so,' she said—; then she stopped, not wishing to triumph over her rival.—' He has told me so ; but I knew it without his telling. We all know it. I have not come here to deceive you, or to create false suspicions. He does love you. He cares nothing for me, and he does love you. But is he therefore to be ruined ? Which had he better lose! All that he has in the world, or • the girl that has taken his fancy?'—' I would sooner lose the world twice over than lose him.'—' Yes ; but you are only a woman. Think of his position ! There is not a Jew in all Prague respected among us as he is respected. He knows more, can do more, has more of wit and cleverness, than any of us. We look to him to win for the Jews in Prague something of the freedom which Jews have elsewhere,—in Paris and in London. If he takes a Christian for his wife, all this will be destroyed.'—' But all will be well if he were to marry you!' Now it was Rebecca's turn to pause ; but it was not for long. 'I love him dearly,' she said ; with a love as warm as yours.'—' And therefore I am to be untrue to him?' said Nina, again seating herself.—' And were to become his wife,' continued Rebecca, not regarding the interrup- tion, 'it would be well with him in a worldly point of view. All our people would be glad, because there has been friendship between the families from of old. His father would be pleased, and he would become rich ; and I also am not without some wealth of my own.'— 'While I am poor,' said Nina ; so poor that,—look here, I can only mend my rags. There, look at my shoes. I have not another pair to my feet. But if he likes me, poor and ragged, better than he likes you, rich—' She got so far, raising her voice as she spoke ; but she could get no farther, for her sobs stopped her voice. But while she was struggling to speak, the other girl rose and knelt at Nina's feet, putting her long tapering fingers upon Nina's threadbare arms, so that her forehead was almost close to Nina's lips. He does,' said Rebecca. 'It is true—quite true. He loves you, poor as you are, ten times—a hun- dred times—better than he loves me, who am not poor. You have won it altogether by yourself, with nothing of outside art to back you. You have your triumph. Will not that be enough for a life's contentment?"
This contrast between Rebecca Loth and Nina Balatka, and the sketches of their mutual relations with each other, is the finest thing in the story, and, no doubt, the artistic object for which the story was written. There is just enough of parallelism between this interview and Lady Ongar's bold avowal to Mrs. Burton, the sister-in-law of the girl to whom Harry Clavering is engaged, in The Claverings, of her wish to marry Harry Clavering, and her inten- tion of leaving it to him to determine whether it shall be so or not, to make each recall the other, and yet the two are, we need not say, in their whole expression and character quite distinct. Lady Ongar's boldness is the boldness of a woman whose delicacy of character has been rubbed off by a mercenary marriage, and the constant gaze into her own motives and aims in life which that mercenary marriage has produced. Rebecca Loth's boldness is boldness of race and habit of constitution, a boldness quite consistent with the highest kind of essential purity and nobility of character,—the bold- ness of nature which is accustomed steadily to face its own desires and to devise shame in words, where there is no shame in the thoughts which the words express.
There is much that is good in Nina Balatka beside the pictures of Nina and Rebecca and their relations. The undergrowth of Christian scruples in Nina's mind as to marrying a Jew, the difficulties she feels in praying to the Virgin and to Saints to par- don her for marrying a man who does not believe in either Virgin or Saints, the inclination she half indulges to pray to them that she may be allowed to be converted (honestly) to her lover's faith in order to satisfy him, if it is impossible he should be converted to her faith,—a confusion of ideas most natural to a girl of Nina's nature,---are all most skilfully touched in. Nor is the relation between Nina and her Jew lover much less graphic. His shrewd, elderly, mercantile intellect, with its imperious impatience of any- thing that he could not see through, his unjust suspiciousness of Nina even in spite of his love for her, arising from his tendency to distrust the insight of love and control it by the insight of wide speculative suggestion, is a striking picture. The slightly comic sketch of the Zamenoys' household is entertaining in its way. And finally, the scenery of Prague, the vivid impression produced by the Jews' quarter, by the unique old bridge over the Moldau, by the deserted palace of the Hradschin towering over the desolate old-fashioned quarter of Prague called the Kleinseite, are repro- duced in this story with a vividness which will greatly enhance the pleasure of the tale to all who have seen and admired that mast Oriental of Western capitals.
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