stice, of charity, and
of household sanctities--let him hold the energy of the prophets, the
patient care of the Masters, the fortitude of martyred generations, as
mere stuff for a professorship. The business of the Jew in all things
is to be even as the rich Gentile."

Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a moment's
silence. Not one member of the club shared his point of view or his
emotion; but his whole personality and speech had on them the effect of
a dramatic representation which had some pathos in it, though no
practical consequences; and usually he was at once indulged and
contradicted. Deronda's mind went back upon what must have been the
tragic pressure of outward conditions hindering this man, whose force
he felt to be telling on himself, from making any world for his thought
in the minds of others--like a poet among people of a strange speech,
who may have a poetry of their own, but have no ear for his cadence, no
answering thrill to his discovery of the latent virtues in his mother
tongue.

The cool Buchan was the first to speak, and hint the loss of time. "I
submit," said he, "that ye're traveling away from the questions I put
concerning progress."

"Say they're levanting, Buchan," said Miller, who liked his joke, and
would not have objected to be called Voltairian. "Never mind. Let us
have a Jewish night; we've not had one for a long while. Let us take
the discussion on Jewish ground. I suppose we've no prejudice here;
we're all philosophers; and we like our friends Mordecai, Pash, and
Gideon, as well as if they were no more kin to Abraham than the rest of
us. We're all related through Adam, until further showing to the
contrary, and if you look into history we've all got some discreditable
forefathers. So I mean no offence when I say I don't think any great
things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. What
then? I think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I
suppose we don't want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or
yellow--I know I've just given my half-crown to the contrary. And that
reminds me, I've a curious old German book--I can't read it myself, but
a friend of mine was reading out of it to me the other day--about the
prejudicies against the Jews, and the stories used to be told against
'em, and what do you think one was? Why, that they're punished with a
bad odor in their bodies; and _that_, says the author, date 1715 (I've
just