ave pride enough to resist this in the only
way which is open to them; namely, by keeping their children from
attending the schools. Therefore, education not being compulsory, as
it is in Norway and Sweden, little benefit is derived from the
common-school system as here sustained. With a view utterly to
abolish the Polish language, it is even made a penal offence to use
it in commercial transactions.

The Polish peasantry as a whole are by no means a prepossessing race.
Naturally dull, they are still more demoralized and degraded by an
unconquerable love of intoxicants, the dram being unfortunately both
cheap and potent. In every village and settlement, no matter how
small, there are always Jews who are ready and eager to administer to
this base appetite, and to rob the poor ignorant people of both
health and money. It is unpleasant to speak harshly of the Jewish
race, especially as we know personally some highly cultured,
responsible, and eminently respectable men who form a decided
exception to the general rule; but the despised and wandering
children of Israel, wherever we have met them, certainly appear to
exercise an evil influence upon the people among whom they dwell. We
record the fact with some hesitation, but with a strong sense of
conviction. Poland appears to be after Palestine a sort of Land of
Promise to the Jews; but they are certainly here, if nowhere else, a
terrible scourge upon the native race. Their special part of the
town--the Jews' Quarter--is a mass of filth, so disgusting, so
ill-smelling, that one would think it must surely breed all sorts of
contagious diseases; but here they live on in unwholesome dens, amid
undrained, narrow streets and lanes, often in almost roofless
tenements. Bayard Taylor wrote of the Polish Jews: "A more vile and
filthy race, except the Chinese, cannot disgust the traveller." Here,
as in other parts of the world, the Hebrew people have a history full
of vicissitudes, and are composed of various tribes, Galician,
Moldavian, Hungarian, and native Polish; but in their general
characteristics they are identical, being universally wedded to filth
and greed. While they are strangely interesting as a study they are
never attractive, with their cringing, servile manners and dirty
gabardines, their cadaverous faces, piercing black eyes, their hooked
noses and ringleted locks. Wherever met they are keen-witted,
avaricious, patient, frugal, long-suffering. The race is now banishe