He -- the ordinary Englishman -- may be dimly conscious that the Jєω is the one great exception to the general curse upon the sons of Adam, and that he alone eats bread, not in the sweat of his own face, but in the sweat of his neighbour's face -- like the German cuckoo, who does not colonize, but establishes himself in the colonies of other natives. He has perhaps been told that all the world over the Jєω spurns the honest toil of the peasant and the day labourer; that in the new Jєωry of Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane, in the Marais, in the Ghetto, in the Juden Strasse, and in the Hárat el Yahúd (Jєωιѕн quarters) of Mussulman cities, his sole business is quocuмque modo rem -- sordid gains -- especially by money-lending, and by usury, which may not be practised upon a fellow Jєω, but which, with the cleanest of consciences, is applied to the ruin of the Gentile. He has heard that where Saxon and Celt ply pick and pan, the Hebrew broker and pedlar buy up their gains and grow rich where the working-men starve in the midst of gold. He sees that the "Chosen People" will swarm over the world from California to Australia, wherever greed of gain induces them to travel. "To my mind," says a popular writer, "there are few things so admirable and wonderful in this life as the 'getting on,' as it is vulgarly called, of the Hebrew race. For one of us who, by means of infinite wriggling, panting, toiling, struggling, and hanging on by his eyebrows, so to speak, to opportunity, ambitious to emerge from obscurity, and ascend to the topmost round of the ladder, there seems to be at least five hundred Caucasian Arabs who attain the desired altitude; ay, and who manage to avoid turning giddy and toppling over. Most Jєωs seem to rise, and the instances of a few going 'to the utter bad,' as the phrase runs, seem equally as rare. How often your successful Nazarene comes to grief! At the moment you think him Lord of All he is Master of Nothing. Jєωs appear to keep what they have gotten; and, what is better, to get more, and keep that too. They are not much given, I fancy, to experience the pangs of remorse; and I cannot well imagine a mad Jєω. It must be something awful. On the whole, looking at the vast number of Christians I have known who from splendour have subsided into beggary, and the vast number of Hebrews I have watched advancing, not from mendicity -- a Jєω never begs, save from one of his own tribe, and then I suppose the transaction is more of the nature of a friendly loan, to be repaid with interest when brighter days arrive -- but from extreme indigence to wealth and station, I incline to the opinion that Gentiles have a natural alacrity in sinking -- look how heavy I can be -- but that the Chosen People have as natural a tendency towards buoyancy. That young man with the banner in Mr. Longfellow's ballad was, depend upon it, an Israelite of the Israelites; only I think the poet was wrong, as poets generally are, in his climax. The young man was not frozen to death. He made an immense fortune at the top of Mont Blanc by selling 'Excelsior' penny ices."

The secret of this "getting on" is known to every expert. The Jєωιѕн boy begins from his earliest days with changing a few sovereigns, and he pursues the path of lucre till the tomb opens to receive him. He is utterly single-minded in this point; he has but one idea, and therefore he must succeed. Who does not remember the retort of the Jєωιѕн capitalist to the Christian statesman who, impertinently enough, advised him to teach his children something beyond mere trade? "My first wish," answered the Hebrew, "is to see my boys become good men of business; beyond that -- nothing!"

The average Englishman cannot help observing with Cobbett, and despite Lord Macaulay, that the callings which the lower orders of Jєωs especially prefer are those held mean or dishonourable by other men such as demoralizing usury, receiving stolen goods, buying up old clothes, keeping gamblinghouses and betting-cribs, dealing in a literature calculated to pervert the mind of youth; combining, as a person -- afterwards sent to Newgate -- lately did, the trade of a cosmetic artist with the calling of a procuress, and supplying the agapemonæ of the world, {NOTE: At this moment there is a traffic far fouler and more terrible than any Coolie-hunting in African slave-export -- extending from Lemberg to India and China.} while occasionally producing a sharp jockey or a hard-hitting prize-fighter. He is not ignorant of their prodigious trickery, of their immense and abnormal powers of lying -- the "trifle tongue," as they picturesquely call it -- and their subtle art of winning their object by roundabout ways. He cannot mistake their physical cowardice, but he remembers that the Jєωιѕн officers, once so numerous in the French army, were as brave as their Christian brethren; and again he recognizes the fact that lying and cowardice long continue to be the effects of oppression. He smiles at their intense love of public amusements, and their excessive fondness for display, evinced by tawdry finery and mosaic gold.

Knowing this, however, he supposes himself to know the worst. He has heard little of the excessive optimism of the Jєω, so strongly opposed to Christianity, the "religion of sorrow." He knows nothing of the immense passions and pugnacity, the eagerness and tenacity of Lutheran rancour displayed against all who differ from some minutiæ of oral law. He ignores the over-weening, narrow-minded pride of caste which makes the Jєω "destined by God to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" -- as one of their own race, Rabbi Ascher (initiator of youth), even now repeats. {NOTE: The essential superiority of the Jєω over Nakhrím, or strangers, is carefully kept up by the Gavním, or luminaries, of the Jєωιѕн Law. During the preparations for Sabbath one of the prayers is: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast made a distinction between things sacred and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and other nations." On the New Year's Day (Rosh ha-Shanah) the house-charms and occult arts which lead to a variety of abominations.} He cannot realize the fact that the ferocity and terrible destructiveness which characterize the Jєω and his literature, from the days of the Prophets to those of the тαℓмυdists, are present in his civilized neighbour, whom he considers to be one of the best of men -- a sleeping lion, it is true, but ready to awake upon the first occasion. And he is ignorant of the Eastern Jєωs' love of mysticism and symbolism, their various horrible and disgusting superstitions, and their devotion to magical master says at supper: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who didst select us from all other people, and exalt us above all other nations, and sanctify us with Thy commandments, ... for Thou didst select us, and sanctify us from all other people... Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel," etc. At the Passover they repeat the same, adding, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel and the times." During the Feast of Pentecost they pray, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast selected us above all other people, and exalted us above all other nations, and sanctified us with Thy commandments. . . . Our Lord is exalted -- He is the first and the last, He desired and chose us, and delivered to us the Law."