in the barter of superannuated breeches? The garments of mankind (as well as their bodies) will grow old, and wear out, and become fusty to their owners,-why should they not be sold, and undergo reviving and alterations, abbreviation, expansion, elongation, or patching? and why not adorn other dorsal, pectoral, and crural humanities?

And why should not the buyers thereof be honest and true men, and carry a bag without scorn, and utter old clo' without reproach, and make their five per cent. (or whatever further enormity is usual with Israelites) without being doomed to live, and trade, and multiply, and fade out and die in the squalor of Houndsditch, and the grime of Petticoat Lane? If Rag Fair be a plague spot, kept alive by Jewish rapacity, for the accommodation of Gentile birds of prey -why should it be tolerated for a single hour? why should not the whole trading, trafficking, and barter, be dragged out into the light of day, and be cleansed, and made right and true between man and man?

It remains for the Jews of Britain themselves to answer such questions as these boldly, and without delay; unless they wish the infamy now attaching to their race to become deeper as it expands into perpetuity, and their restoration to a status of honour among the nations a hopeless impossibility. Let them retain their peculiar usages if they will; let them cling to their superstition, until common sense and mental freedom rid them of her iron fetters. But, if the middle and higher classes are to be raised to a 'status of real respect and honour, the resurrection must be from within; and the lower class must rise with them. They must be washed, combed, and educated in body as well as mind. Fresh air, sunshine, cleanliness, and self-respect, will soon help to rid them of moral miasma, mental darkness, inward pollution, and social degradation.

And what applies to the Jews in Britain, applies to them everywhere; for everywhere they are alike. This is at once their boast and their dishonour. "In every inhabited region of the civilized world, in every port, in every city, in every mart of business, in every climate, among every people of every language, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Jews are dispersed. They are found, not merely as travellers come to see the country, and then to leave it; nor as men of business, come to conduct certain transactions of traffic or finance, and then return home. They have no home anywhere; they possess none of those features, whether of territory or government, which give nationality and unity to other people. Everywhere they are residents; everywhere felt to be strangers." (Jews and Judaism, pp. 8-9.)

But this is not to continue to be their state for ever; and, like all other great and vital changes, theirs must be wrought out by themselves.

We have a word to say, in parting, to the authors from whose pages our facts have been mainly drawn. To Mr. Mills-that it is quite possible to be instructive without being dull, especially in the conveyance of facts so full of interest and importance as those with which he has so diligently filled his little volume. To Mr. McNeile-that if, in lecturing on the Jews and Judaism, he had kept more closely to his text, the exposition would have been more profitable-to his readers, if not to himself. To the author of A few Words to the Jews, &c.-that his book would have been more satisfactory and more weighty, had it been less full of grumbling. For the future, too, he must avoid such opening paragraphs as this: 'The world was once borne down a slow and turbid stream; it passed along like a huge barge upon a stagnant river;" &c. &c. We' would submit that a stream may be slow, but that a river, bearing on its breast a huge barge, and yet stagnant, is a figure of speech that involves too much of mystery, if not contradiction, for ordinary readers. His theme was a truly great one-why not take the trouble to write worthily of such a subject?

66

A more striking one it would be difficult to find. "I look on the Jews," says a Christian Archbishop*, " as the most remarkable people on earth." Great in crimes, and no less great in virtues; boasting an antiquity of race such as no nation of the earth ever yet claimed, or can claim; nobly generous in the time of affluence and prosperity;. patient in the endurance of insult, oppression, and adversity; unequalled in the number and extent of their misfortunes; and yet undaunted and uncrushed after the despotism of centuries;-the present era in their destiny is full of sad and terrible interest. "The Jews," said Martin Luther, three hundred years ago†, "are the most miserable people on earth. They sit as on a wheelbarrow, without a country, people, or government.' We would have them get up from the wheelbarrow, and, like men in earnest for the good of their race, look into the homes, and habits, and moral condition of their lowest class, those eight thousand axxopópo-bag-bearers-of whom we have already spoken. Ere they can have a country, they must have a people worthy of inhabiting it: a government will come in due season. If the life of their religion has died out, and its obsolete forms and ceremonies hang as a burden round the necks of their poorer brethren, of which they are too ignorant to understand the meaning, and too indifferent to reap the blessing, it is for the rich, and the wise, and the moral, at once to set to work for a reformation. The destiny of the nation is, humanly speaking, in their own hands. "O, sir!" once said a learned Jew, "make the inhabitants of Holy

Canterbury; Hansard's Debates, April, 1833.

† Martin Luther's Table Book, page 346.

well Street and Duke's Place Israelites first; then we may debate about making them Christians." When in a state worthy of being Christianised, or, at least, to learn Christian wisdom, then it will be high time to debate whether the Jews shall be admitted into Parlia ment or not.

ABER.

In a series of sketches of Chester and the surrounding country, it may not be inappropriate to introduce my readers to the sterner beauties of its rugged neighbour, North Wales; nor is there a spot in all that glorious hill-country more grand in its wild and desolate solitude than Aber. As I saw it, I will endeavour to describe it; but I cannot hope to convey in words the majesty of that mountain scenery. Leaving Chester early in the morning, with one companion (the only number compatible with real enjoyment, dear Reader), we rattled away upon the Holyhead Railway, skirting the sea-coast, until we swept under the huge black cliff of Penmaenmawr the frowning giant who strides forward from the ranks of his brethren, as if to challenge the assault of his ancient enemy the sea, who presses nearer and ever nearer, gradually encroaching on his domain-we soon arrived at Aber station, and alighted. We made straight for the Pass; but barely had we entered it, when the clouds that had threatened us for some time burst over our heads, and we fled for shelter to the nearest trees. In a few minutes the rain ceased, and we resumed our course; but had scarcely walked a mile, when a heavy shower drove us to seek shelter under the lee of a stone fence for trees there were none; we had left them far below. So down we sat and smoked our pipes, while our dog (I beg his pardon, for not introducing him earlier) rolled about in the wet heath, half mad with delight. At last the clouds rolled away, and on we went again; skirting a broad hill that rose right before us, we entered the grandest part of the Pass. The mountains on either side were utterly bleak and barren; huge grey stones were scattered all over the dale, and here and there barred the course of the little river that went foaming and leaping down the rough descent. As we toiled up the Pass, the sun shone forth gloriously, gilding the grey crags that crowned the hills around us, and giving us an earnest of the beauties yet in store. (The clouds, I may observe, had done as much in their line.)

Another half-hour brought us to the lake, and a small boat, that we found moored to the shore, was speedily put into requisition; a miracle of Welsh ship-building it was, and rejoiced in a pair of paddles that would have puzzled Clasper; nevertheless, it furnished us with the means of enjoying a siesta that beat Jonathan's rockingchair into fits; while our quadruped disported himself in the lake, to the great edification, no doubt, of the natives. Returning to the shore, we moored our little bark to the rock, and continued our sascent for a few hundred yards; then, looking back, we beheld a glorious scene. Slanting away from the spot wheron we stood, the Pass lay between two dark and rugged ranges of hills, overshadowed now by heavy clouds; and through the gap between the hill-crests beneath us, we saw the blue sea sparkling in the sunshine, and one white sail slowly floating upon its bosom. But we had yet far to go, and resuming our "pilgrim-staves," soon crested the hill at the head of the Pass: a toughish pull it was; but, oh! the glorious view that burst upon us! Away to the eastward lay the vale of Clwyd, with all its varied beauties of hill, dale, and plain; and beyond that rose the long chain of mountains, on which old Moel Fammau looks proudly down from her crowned crags; stretching southward, a line of hills brought the eye to Llangollen, whose broad-topped mountains rose bold and clear against the grey sky.

Again we resumed our march, and bent our steps towards the highest point that yet looked down upon us; this too was the steepest ascent that we had yet encountered; but there was no other difficulty in our way, for the rain appeared to have ceased for the day. Here we are, at last, on the top; but the sappers and miners have been here before us, and have left their mark in the shape of this cairn of unhewn stone that promises a still wider prospect:up you go. There, sir; look around, and see what a glorious scene those poor wretches have missed, whom we left flattening their noses against the window-panes at Aber, and staring woefully at the rain! Come here a hundred times, and you may never again behold so glorious a blending of light and shade, of tempest and repose. Calm, and blue, and glassy, the sea spreads her fair bosom to the sun; so far beneath us, that the canvass of yonder ship, that glides so smoothly along, seems no larger than the very motes that are dancing in the sunbeam. Can that be old Penmaenmawr, at whose foot we stood this morning, and gazed with awe upon his scarred and wrinkled forehead, frowning over the smiling sea,-can that be Penmaenmawr? has the giant crouched beneath our feet? Follow the long line of the coast some forty miles to the eastward; at such a distance, the view is indistinct; but there the silver Dee pours her waters into the deep. Looking southward again, the eye follows the long chain of hills that seem to connect Moel Fammau with the heights around

Llangollen; all the intervening country, woodland and meadow, glows in the sunlight: - but where is Snowdon? shrouded in a dense white mist, that wraps it round like a mantle, and fills the rugged Pass of Nant Francon. But, even while we gaze at the dim and misty Pass, the heavens are darkened above it, and the clouds seem to roll between the summits of the crags: down comes the blast from the nor'-west, and away before it flies cloud and mist, sweeping towards us. The Pass is dark as midnight, and the rain is falling there in torrents; the blast sweeps through, and dashes the thick white mist against the sharp jutting crags, till the snowy vapour shoots through their crevices like the smoke from a cannon. Again and again, like the incessant discharges from a battery, hitherto masked, that pours destruction upon the unwary foe, dart the jets of vapour athwart the midnight blackness of the glen. Oh, for the pencil of the painter to depict that scene in all its terrible beauty! The imagination may conceive it; but words of ours are too feeble to display its grandeur. For a while we gazed on this sublime spectacle, unconscious of the bitter wind that was benumbing our limbs; but at length we arose, and, pursuing our course, commenced the descent of the mountain on the opposite side to that by which we had ascended.

The descent was steep, but the footing secure; and we soon reached the banks of the stream that was hurrying down from its cradle in the mountains to the falls of Aber. Along the brook side we steered, once turning aside to examine a deserted camp of our ubiquitous friends, the Sappers and Miners: they had chosen a spot where a huge boulder, slanting out of the ground, formed a mighty corner stone for their edifice (singularly enough, it stood in the north-east); and against this massive block, that formed one side of the camp, rested the ends of a horse-shoe-shaped wall of rough stones, here and there strengthened by natural buttresses of grey rock that cropped out from the hill-side. Roof there was none; but the over-arching corner-stone would furnish protection from the weather; and the remains, cold and black, of a fire-place, showed that the tenants of this wild den had made themselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow.

Returning to the brook, that went plunging downwards in a hundred little fleecy falls, we rambled by its side till a low monotonous roar, growing louder and deeper as we advanced, told us that the cascade was not far off; and in a few minutes we stood at the head of the fall-of the upper fall, I should say. We found little difficulty in effecting our descent as far as the rock basin, where the waters, checked midway in their course, seethe and whirl before they go leaping down the second and greater fall; and, standing upon a projecting crag, we had a fine view of the upper cascade. But scarce