dance on public worship. The ladies generally make a point of going on the Sunday, that is the Friday night or Saturday morning, after they are married; and being thus introduced in their new capacity, once a year is considered as a sufficient compliance, on their part, with the ancient injunc tion to assemble themselves together in the house of prayer Like the votaries of some Christian establishments, the Jewesses trust more to the prayers of their priests than to their own." THE SYNAGOGUES. "The synagogues in Jerusalem are both poor and small, not owing to the poverty of their possessors, but to the prudential motives above-mentioned." THE JEWESSES. "The Jewesses in Jerusalem speak in a decided and firm tone, unlike the hesitating and timid voice of the Arab and Turkish females; and claim the European privilege of differing from their husbands, and maintaining their own opinions. They are fair and good-looking: red and auburn hair are by no means uncommon in either of the sexes. I never saw any of them with veils; and was informed that it is the general practice of the Jewesses in Jerusalem to go with their faces uncovered; they are the only females there who do so. Generally speaking, I think they are disposed to be rather of a plethoric habit; and the admirers of size and softness in the fair sex, will find as regularly well-built fatties, with double mouldings in the neck and chin, among the fair daughters of Jerusalem, as among the fairer daughters of England. They seem particularly liable to eruptive diseases; and the want of children is as great a heart-break to them now as it was in the days of Sarah. saw, "In passing up to the synagogue, I was particularly struck with the mean and wretched appearance of the houses on both sides of the streets, as well as with the poverty of their inhabitants. Some of the old men and old women had more withered and hungry aspects than any of our race I ever with the exception of the caverned dames at Gornou in Egyptian Thebes, who might have sat in a stony field as a picture of famine the year after the flood. The sight of a poor Jew in Jerusalem has in it something peculiarly affecting. The heart of this wonderful people, in whatever clime they roam, still turns to it as the city of their promised rest. They take pleasure in her ruins, and would lick the very dust for her sake. Jerusalem is the centre around which the exiled sons of Judah build, in airy dreams, the mansions of their future greatness. In whatever part of the world he may live, the heart's desire of a Jew, when gathered to his fathers, is to be buried in Jerusalem. Thither they return from Spain and Portugal, from Egypt and Barbary, and other countries among which they have been scattered; and when, after all their longings, and all their struggles up the steeps of life, we see them poor, and blind, and naked in the streets of their once happy Zion, he must have a cold heart that can remain untouched by their sufferings, without uttering a prayer that the light of a reconciled countenance would shine on the darkness of Judah, and the day-star of Bethlehem arise in their hearts." JERUSALEM. The Jews are the best cicerones in Jerusalem, because they generally give the ancient names of places, which the guides and interpreters belonging to the different convents do not. They are not forward in presenting themselves, and must generally be sought for." THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY. Oh! there's a charm,—a spell, Or all the various pleasures of which the human mind is capable, the sensations caused by gloomy and melancholy thoughts are the most sensibly felt, and yet, at the same time, the least understood or defined. Not only can we fully enter into the feelings of mourning and dejected friends or companions, not only can we readily believe that they find a real delight in brooding over their own misfortunes, but we can ourselves participate in those feelings;-and while we are endeavouring to console them, we perceive that we ourselves are imperceptibly affected with the same tender and opposite, though unaccountably mixed, emotions of sorrow and delight. We see the almost heart-broken parent, bereaved of the only surviving hope of perpetuating the name of his family, or deploring the loss of the affectionate partner of all his hopes and all his fears, his joys and sorrows, his prosperity and adversity ;;-we see the son, whose whole care was wound up in the life of a doating mother, and who now appears inconsolable for her loss,―amidst all their fears, amidst all their pangs, still seeking the tomb, and weeping over the spot, beneath which are concealed the remains of those once so dear to them. And we are at no loss to conceive the motive for actions apparently so contrary to reason. The mind feels a secret satisfaction in the contemplation of its sufferings, and finds relief from the very quarter from which all its anguish springs. It is to the deep melancholy which pervades it, that Tragedy owes that decided superiority over comic representations, which is acknowledged and felt by all. How is the heart moved, how are the passions excited, by the raving madness of a Lear, or the gloomy resolution of a Hamlet, when they would remain untouched by the finest specimens of Comedy! In nature too, it throws a beauty upon the grandest objects, and heightens the effect of the most delightful prospects. Who does not feel the truth of that observation of the "poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest:" "Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora vertis E terrâ alterius sævum spectare dolorem." For the sight is accompanied by awfully moving and sublime, because melancholy and pathetic, feelings. IDEAS OF THE ANCIENTS. THE Indian notion, that the world was supported by an elephant, which stood on the back of a tortoise, is surely paralleled in absurdity by that idea of some of the ancients, as noticed by Spence, in his POLYMETIS, that the heavens were supported by a brazen vault, while they attributed the noise of thunder to Jupiter's chariot and horses rattling along that arch; and they supposed he darted the thunder out of his hand from the clouds beneath that arch. They also imagined that the whole sea rested on an arched work, under which ample space were the habitations of the seagods and goddesses. MORE PROPHECIES FOR POOR ROBIN'S ALMANACK. See New Monthly Magazine for Murch. WHEN maids, about to marry, When authors cease to scribble, When Lawyers find no quibble, When Whigs and Tories mingle, When Mrs. Fig, of Cheapside, When John Bull loves starvation, And Paddy shuns a row; When Scotchmen swear their nation Produces nothing now; When Richard Martin's speeches, Tough drovers shall appal; Then shut your shops, ye leeches, The sky's about to fall! When Frenchmen cease to caper, And Germans love a spree; When Stock, the city draper, Prime Minister shall be; When Hume in place rejoices, Hard by Westminster Hall; Then, preachers, raise your voices, The sky's about to fall! When in the east descending, The sun shall set at noon; When air-balloons ascending, Shall journey to the moon; When pris'ners on the tread-mill, Then cheer, ye wretches fed ill, ALLAN FITZALLAN. |