dition
was established; and on that human palimpsest which has borne the
inscriptions of all languages and all epochs, was writ large the
sign-manual of England. Judaea prostrated itself before the Dagon of its
hereditary foe, the Philistine, and respectability crept on to freeze
the blood of the Orient with its frigid finger, and to blur the vivid
tints of the East into the uniform gray of English middle-class life. In
the period within which our story moves, only vestiges of the old gaiety
and brotherhood remained; the full _al fresco_ flavor was evaporated.

And to-day they are alt dead--the _Takeefim_ with big hearts and bigger
purses, and the humorous _Schnorrers_, who accepted their gold, and the
cheerful pious peddlers who rose from one extreme to the other, building
up fabulous fortunes in marvellous ways. The young mothers, who suckled
their babes in the sun, have passed out of the sunshine; yea, and the
babes, too, have gone down with gray heads to the dust. Dead are the
fair fat women, with tender hearts, who waddled benignantly through
life, ever ready to shed the sympathetic tear, best of wives, and cooks,
and mothers; dead are the bald, ruddy old men, who ambled about in faded
carpet slippers, and passed the snuff-box of peace: dead are the
stout-hearted youths who sailed away to Tom Tiddler's ground; and dead
are the buxom maidens they led under the wedding canopy when they
returned. Even the great Dr. Sequira, pompous in white stockings,
physician extraordinary to the Prince Regent of Portugal, lies
vanquished by his life-long adversary and the Baal Shem himself, King of
Cabalists, could command no countervailing miracle.

Where are the little girls in white pinafores with pink sashes who
brightened the Ghetto on high days and holidays? Where is the beauteous
Betsy of the Victoria Ballet? and where the jocund synagogue dignitary
who led off the cotillon with her at the annual Rejoicing of the Law?
Worms have long since picked the great financier's brain, the
embroidered waistcoats of the bucks have passed even beyond the stage of
adorning sweeps on May Day, and Dutch Sam's fist is bonier than ever.
The same mould covers them all--those who donated guineas and those who
donated "gifts," the rogues and the hypocrites, and the wedding-drolls,
the observant and the lax, the purse-proud and the lowly, the coarse and
the genteel, the wonderful chapmen and the luckless _Schlemihls_, Rabbi
and _Dayan_ and _Shoc