hat my inquiries had reached a point beyond which it would not
be prudent to push them. The monk was getting very red in the face; his
motions were growing quick and violent; and, with more haste than
reverence, he put back his god into its crib, and prepared to lock it up
in its press. His fellow monk had started to his feet, and was rapidly
extinguishing the candles, as if he smelt the unwholesome air of heresy.
The women were told to be off; and the exhibition closed with somewhat
less show of devotion than it had opened.

Here, by the banks of the Tiber, as of old by the Euphrates, sits the
captive daughter of Judah; and I went one afternoon towards twilight to
visit the Ghetto. It is a narrow, dark, damp, tunnel-like lane. Old
Father Tiber had been there but a day or two previously, and had left,
as usual, very distinct traces of his visit, in the slime and wet that
covered the place. Formerly it was shut in with gates, which were locked
every night at Ave Maria: now the gates are gone, and the broken and
ragged door-posts show where they had hung. Opposite the entrance of the
Ghetto stands a fine church, with a large sculpture-piece over its
portal, representing a crucifix, surrounded with the motto, which meets
the eye of the Jew every time he passes out or comes in, "All day long I
have stretched forth my hands unto a gainsaying and disobedient people."
The allusion here, no doubt, is to their unwillingness to pay their
taxes, for that is the only sense in which the Pope's hands are all day
long stretched out towards this people. Recently Pio Nono contracted a
loan for twenty-one millions of francs, with the house of Rothschild;
and thus, after persecuting the race for ages, the Vicar of God has come
to lean for the support of his tottering throne upon a Jew. To do the
Pope justice, however, the Jews in Rome are gathered once a-year into a
church, where a sermon is preached for their conversion. The spectacle
is said to be a very edifying one. The preacher fires off from the
pulpit the hardest hits he can; and the Jews sit spitting, coughing, and
making faces in return; while a person armed with a long pole stalks
through the congregation, and admonishes the noisiest with a firm sharp
rap on the head. The scene closes with a baptism, in which, it is
affirmed, the same Jew sometimes plays the same part twice, or oftener
if need be.

The tyrannical spirit of Popery is seen in the treatment to which these
descenda