Grace Aguilar (born 1816, died 1847), authoress of moral tales and religious tracts, was a Jewess of Spanish extraction. For the shortness of her life, her works are very numerous. They may be divided as follows: Two historic novels, “The Vale of Cedars,” a story of the Jews in Spain during the fifteenth century, and “The Days of Bruce,” which remains the most popular of her works; they are written in the heroic style fit for the mouths of the knights of bygone days or the heroes of modern melodrama, and, but for the entire absence of humor, would recall “Ivanhoe” and the “Talisman;” three domestic stories, “Home Influence,” “The Mother’s Recompense,” and “Woman’s Friendship;” and a collection of short stories, “Home Scenes and Heart Studies,” the general character of which is like Miss Edgeworth’s tales, though again the style is for the most part heroic, and humour absent; “The Women of Israel,” a series of short sketches of some of the notable women in ancient Jewish history; and a few religious treatises, the most important being “The Spirit of Judaism,” in which she defends the purity of her religon against the perversions and persecutions of Christianity. She died at Frankfort.

Personal

  Grace Aguilar was extremely fond of music; she had been taught the piano from infancy; and, in 1831, commenced the harp. She sang pleasingly, preferred English songs, invariably selecting them for the beauty or sentiment of the words. She was also passionately fond of dancing; and her cheerful, lively manners, in the society of her young friends, would scarcely have led any to imagine how deeply she felt and pondered the serious and solemn subjects which afterwards formed the labour of her life. She enjoyed all that was innocent; but the sacred feeling of duty always regulated her conduct.

  She was a “woman of Israel,” truthful, upright, charitable, just and true. We echo the sentiment we read many years ago on her monument: “Let her own works praise her in the gates.”

  In person she was not at all the typical Jewess. She had soft but expressive grey eyes, and that brown hair which only wants a touch of gold to make it almost auburn. Above the middle height, she was slender to a degree, imparting an air of fragility—with regular features, and an oval face that easily lighted up. Her voice was clear-toned, though gentle, and her manners were essentially what is understood by ladylike. She was devoted to her parents, and proud of having been entirely educated by them, save for an interval in early childhood, too brief to be worth recording. She was proud, too, of being descended from philosophers, physicians, and statesmen of Spain, although they existed under conditions, difficult to realize or wholly to excuse…. Indeed, in remembering Grace Aguilar, I always think more of her moral elevation than of her genius; so tender was her conscience, so charitable were her judgments, and so generous her sympathies.

General

  All of these works are highly creditable to the literary taste and talents of the writer; and they have a value beyond what the highest genius could give—the stamp of truth, piety, and love, and an earnest desire to do good to her fellow-beings.

  All her novels are of a highly sentimental character, and mainly deal with the ordinary incidents of domestic life. Like the rest of her writings, they evince an intensely religious temperament, but one free from sectarian prejudice.

  Her “Days of Bruce” is a wonderful production for a girl of little more than twenty; and her romance, “The Martyr,” shows how well she was versed in Spanish history.

  In her religious writings Miss Aguilar’s attitude was defensive. Despite her almost exclusive intercourse with Christians and her utter lack of prejudice, her purpose, apparently, was to equip English Jewesses with arguments against conversionists. She inveighed against formalism, and laid stress upon knowledge of Jewish history and the Hebrew language. In view of the neglect of the latter by women (to whom she modestly confined her expostulations), she constantly pleaded for the reading of the Scriptures in the English version. Her interest in the reform movement was deep; yet, despite her attitude toward tradition, she observed ritual ordinances punctiliously. Her last work was a sketch of the “History of the Jews in England,” written for “Chambers’s Miscellany.” In point of style it is the most finished of her productions, free from the exuberances and redundancies that disfigure the tales—published, for the most part, posthumously by her mother. The defects of her style are mainly chargeable to youth.