Rabbies, telling them to regard these sufferings as a new trial of their faith by the Almighty, were obeyed, and they chose to abandon their country rather than their religion. The wealthiest of their numbers, with a kindness natural in Jew to Jew, gave freely from their stores to those whom Spanish extortion had made poorer than themselves. All were busily preparing for departure. There was little delay, for it was no time for procrastination. The dark-haired maiden took leave of her weeping lover, for they had chosen different routes of pilgrimage, and each bade the other trust in Providence to meet again. Brother told brother, and sister her sister, a long and sad farewell. And the old man could ill repress the tear he would not shed, as he clasped for the last time the hand of his ancient friend. What dreadful separations then were there!!

On the day of departure, slowly the little bands, once so happy, toiled onward in the melancholy ways of pilgrimage which they had severally chosen. Their appearance was pitiful in the extreme-all the routes were filled with their numbers. There were feeble women with their helpless children, and men, so weak with grief, that their bowed forms promised little assistance and little protection-some journeying on horses and some on mules, but far the most of them on foot. At sight of so much misery, even the Spaniards wept over their cruelty and their bigoted persecutions. But their grief was vain. Their hard masters were inexorable. They could not, they dared not succor nor harbor them, nor minister to their necessities-it was forbidden them under pain of the severest penalties. On, the unhappy Jews labored, as they had been commanded, unassisted and alone; on, until very soon there were none of their race in Spain. Thus was their golden age forever ended; and a truly iron one succeeded.

We do not wish to follow the ill-starred wanderers in their exilethat exile is an unbroken tale of greater suffering and woe than that which we have just told. They wandered through scenes of constant persecution and of bloodshed; and at last found no quiet nor pleasant resting-places. Most of them passed into Portugal, whose monarch, John the 2d, treated them leniently, allowing all of them, on payment of a small tax, free passage through his dominions, and a few of them even to establish themselves in his realm. Some passed by sea, thence to Africa, where they fell among thieves and robbers-others to Italy, where they were afflicted with terrible diseases-and the remainder were dispersed throughout England, France, and Turkey, unbefriended and often again persecuted. We shall here drop this unpleasant theme of one nation's folly, and another's sorrow, to speak a few general words upon the Jews and their character.

Much has been very unkindly spoken of the character of the Jews. Thar enemies, and we might call them the world, forgetful of all the sympathy and leniency due to the past distressing situations of the nation, have always been prone to judge most harshly of them. They seem to have ever forgotten that a Jew has eyes or hands, "organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions," as themselves, good Christians have, and looked upon him only as a mark for cuffs and curses.

To justify their ill-treatment of him, they have brought all manner of charges against him. They have accused him, and to some extent with truth, of extreme avarice. But is there no excuse for the Jew's avarice? Are there no peculiar palliating circumstances in his case? Is it remembered, that by his avarice alone he can obtain wealth, and by his wealth comfort and respect? The Jew's covetousness cannot compare with the Christian's. He stands on no common social level with him. But his gold is his only hope-it is his only shield from derision and insult-and shall he be censured that he does not throw it aside? His injurers have and yet will often come to him with fawning looks and honeyed words to say, "Shylock, we would have money,"although this Shylock were the very Hebrew cur they had yesterday spurned and spit upon. Was it then strange that Shylock, in all the bitterness of the remembrance of these fresh injuries, should have exulted in his hope of revenge, and demanded from his Antonio even a bond for a pound of his flesh as security for his loan?

It has been asked in a tone of condemnation, why has the Jew never mingled freely with the Christian? Why has he always persisted in withholding himself from familiar intercourse with him? But the union was never voluntary, for the Jew. The barriers which have existed between them, were reared by the Christian. The Jew has always been treated as a stranger and an enemy, and it was not for him to demand a hospitality which it was known he needed, but which was never extended to him. And it is further inquired, why the hatred, why the opposition of the Jew to the Christian? Opposition there is not. The Jew has always chosen the defensive. Truly has he said, "For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe." For his hatred, he has abundant cause. On that day in which the Romans sacked the beautiful city of his Lord, and hurled each stone of his sacred temple from its resting place, his hatred of the world commenced-and time, with its many sorrows, has only increased it. Amid the world of his enemies and persecutors, Christians have been chief-yet it is asked, why does the Jew hate Christians?

But avarice and hate are not the natural-they are the acquired passions of the Jew. There are qualities of the heart within him, which have not been begotten by sorrow-love and generosity to his brethren, reverence for his faith, gratitude to his benefactors, adoration for his God. And may we now hope, that as the dark night is past, the dawn come and gone, that in this bright morning of the day of Liberty, the Jew's troubles may be forever ended?

RECOLLECTIONS OF SICILY.

CHAPTER I.

THE characteristics of our age, certainly in many points a remarkable one, have been the object of much curious investigation by many varieties of men, and have been differently named according to the diversity of acuteness, of perseverance, or of political ambition in the various operators. Of the class of men who prefer a dimly visible plausibility to a clear and simple truth, provided the former relate to what we reverently and sometimes very ignorantly worship as mind, and the latter to what we disparagingly style matter, is one whose members are by a figure of speech we presume, called philosophers, and are almost immediately upon their christening, presented by the public their godfather with the coral and bells of unasking credulity. Now as we are not surprised, if the child in the gradual appreciation of its pulmonic powers occasionally deafens us by the use of the godfather's donation, neither should we be astonished if we occasionally perceive our philosopher practising extensively on the public's gift-nor should we in the one case more than in the other, be displeased. Occasionally the bells tinkle lustily of natural equality, the rights of man, democratic perfection, and such like music; occasionally the whistle sounds the triumph of mesmerism and magnetic telegraphs, hydropathy and homeopathy-but the key note of his toy is the characteristics of the age. The power of the whistle varies, and so does the capability of the philosopher's toy-and accordingly at one time his note says reform-at another, speculation-at another, religious enthusiasm-at another, inordinate ambition-or the opposites of these, and so on. Now without owning the toy, or having been admitted to the philosophic fraternity, I pronounce one strong characteristic to be travel and a fondness for journal writing.

Solomon once said, I believe, that there was nothing new under the sun—and I make less question of the truth of his remark, every journal-diary-pencilings-sketches-or scraps that I peruse. I have been over a large portion of Europe, and have seen many varieties of scenery, mode of life, costume and government; and though I may have found a few things new to me, I do not distinctly recollect one that was new to any of the large numbers of fellow travelers whom I casually met. Varieties of all kinds which I had in earlier days regarded with that formal respect which arises from not having been presented, I discovered to be familiar to the thoughts and lips of everybody else and unfortunately for the gainsayers of Solomon, always in the same dress, with the same forms, the same graces, nay, even the same perfumes. Nor was that all. Did I open a "hand book," a "tourist's companion," a "hint on foreign travel," or any thing of that description, I generally perceived one or more of the same acquaintances smiling or frowning or quoting poetry from behind the page. Wherever I went, whether I joined company with a novice or an old

stager at the "grand tour," I generally met the same chaperons, nor can I say that I regretted it. By thus selecting a few companions of fair reputation, and making their acquaintance an essential, much other company is necessarily excluded, which might have been more original, less blaze, or less artificial, but possibly not more the thing-and from meeting the same individuals everywhere one becomes acquainted with their peculiar style of conversation, and all redundant thought or observation is in consequence dispensed with.

Take it all in all, this want of novelty was not so very difficult a thing to habituate myself to, and I accommodated myself with greater ease perhaps from anticipations of a different state of things in America. But, when I returned to my home I found no such change. New editions of John Murray were called for; journals, diaries, &c. were still manufacturing, and still with the same amount of soap to the same number of hogsheads of water, to borrow Carlysle's illustration-indeed, there was "nothing new under the sun." To be sure one of these collections of soapsuds called the Simplon, "the highway of Hannibal and Napoleon"-and put the Venetian Broca de Leone on the steps of the Doge's palace-but these were merely different dispositions of the same puppets; the amount of wax, paint, and machinery, was the same.

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Now reader, I fear I have been all this time only training a dog to bite myself, for there can be but little doubt that what is now about to exercise your eyes will have some of the outward form of the hogshead-that is, it will be of the nature of a journal; but as to the amount of soap-1 shall not tell you what grocery store I patronize, and you will thus be unable to ascertain it. Neither shall I advertise to make so much suds or to make it all myself; I do not conceive this necessary: only let me tell you beforehand not to take for your motto, non creditur nisi juratis," and not to seek for history, chronology, botany, piety, or any thing but a few moment's occupation in what you read-formerly, if I remember aright, a desideratum at Yale-since if you get of these plums in your pie it will be the offering of pure generosity, and if you don't, John Murray aforesaid sells the licensed article, and I don't feel competent to underbid the trade. Having said then thus much, which in a few words is nothing more than that the views which travelers in Europe have of what they see, appear to me to be in the majority of instances stereotyped, and can be had with greater accuracy from the books, whence they are in a great measure primarily taken, than in the collated extracts of any individual; and that the telling an oft told tale is as disagreeable to me as the necessity of listening to one myself, I may safely commence my narrative.

It was on a most lovely afternoon in February, that I found myself on board the little steamer Palermo, just weighing her anchor in the bay of Naples. The steam was rushing with noisy violence from its pipe, seeming with its shrill scream to chide the lazy vessel for its sloth, the crew were laboring at the bars. The captain was where only an Italian captain could be, just where he should not; the passengers were grouped together in little knots, or eagerly hurrying to and fro in search. of friends or luggage; in fine, that short scene of confusion was being

enacted which is so often attendant upon the departure of a vessel from a crowded port. My luggage had been properly stowed, my curiosity had long since ceased to be excited by even the picturesque comicalities of an Italian leave-taking, my humor was not for conversation, and I turned to enjoy the beauties which nature was from every point forcing upon my gaze. Directly abreast of us, as we lay out some little distance in the bay, was the glistening crescent of Naples, stretching away for miles on either hand, with its villas, and its gardens, and its palaces, crowned by a solitary rocky fort. The air was blowing warm upon it from the far distant Mediterranean, whose curling waves were breaking in silver foam upon the beach. On the right rose Vesuvius, its base dotted with villages, and its summit covered with a hood of smoke that rose and fell in gentle undulations, but lingered still, as though unwilling to leave a scene of so much beauty. On the left, the coast stretched away in a gentle curve till the islands of Ischia and Procida, resting as if in slumber upon the waters, shut out with their green outlines its further course. Seaward the horizon was bounded by a line of living blue, broken here and there by the white sail of some felucca gliding gently down the coast. All nature was quiet, and no noise but that which issued from our little world interrupted its repose. Even this too was soon lulled, as one by one the little boats left the vessel's side, and carried with them freight of friends come to say the last word— the anchor was catted, the roll was called, and we answered to our names, now through the politeness of the steward most awfully beDoned, the steam was prisoned once more in its iron cylinder, the wheels turned slowly round, a forlorn hope of handkerchiefs was drawn up in line upon the quarter deck-a roll or two came like a twinge of conscience big with anticipated ills, and we were under way.

Steadily, and swiftly too, for any vessel but an American, we forced our way through the waves, till every moment the indented shore, the little outposts, islands, and the solitary fort, grew dimmer in the increasing distance, and every moment Vesuvius, now freed from the clog of an unfair comparison, rose higher and higher above the horizon, its towering peak tacitly rebuking the perception which could let its very footstool, richly embroidered though it were, draw the eye from the sole contemplation of its grand form. Still onward, and the rocky island of Capri, the summer garden of Tiberius, raises its precipitous front from the water, and echoes to the noise of our wheels-and now the echo dies away, and the three insulated peaks, which, similar to the famous needles of the English coast, are pushed out from its sunken base, disclose their solitary unsocial cluster--the broad ocean heaves and swells before us, and the sun, wrapt in his mist-mantle, is hastening to his evening bath. No gorgeous drapery of varied colors of crimson and gold, of pink and blue, mingled in one dazzling maze, is thrown around his shoulders. No, these are the autumn draperies of a western world, no other loom can wear them--but a soft golden haze floats around him, which, while it mellows every outline, and lends enchantment to the distance, throws a charm around every thing that challenges you to say 'tis naught but earth, or air, or water. He has gone, and the brief in