he ecclesiastics; there he smuggled through an enemy's
territory, to some prince, arms and implements of war; then he guided
and accompanied a large transport of leather from the interior of
Russia to the fair of Leipzig, he alone being capable by flattery,
money, and brandy, of overmatching the covetousness of the Sclave
nobles. Meanwhile, the most opulent sat in the well-grated rooms of
their Jewish town, concealing securely, under lock and key, the bills
of exchange, and mortgages of the highest lords, they were great
bankers, even according to our present standard.

The Jews of that period were probably richer in proportion to the
Christians than now, and at all events, from the peculiarities of their
traffic, more indispensable. They had friendly protectors alike at the
Imperial court, in the harem of the Sultan, and in the secret chamber
of the Pope; they had an aristocracy of blood, which was still highly
respected by their fellow-believers, and at bridal feasts they wore
with pride, the jewels which some ancestor, long perhaps before the
days of Marco Polo, had brought from India, while exposing his life to
manifold dangers; or another had got by bartering, from the great
Moorish king at Granada. Bat in the streets the Jew still bore the
degrading mark of the unhonoured stranger; in the Empire, a yellow
cockade on his coat, and in Bohemia the stiff blue cravat; as in the
middle ages he had worn the yellow hat, and in Italy the red mantle. It
is true he was the creditor and employer of numerous Christians, but in
most of the greater cities he still lived closely confined to certain
streets or portions of the city. Few German Jewish communities were
larger or more opulent than that in Prague, and it was one of the
oldest in Germany. Seldom does a traveller neglect to visit the narrow
streets of the Jewish quarter, where the small houses, clustered
together like the cells of a beehive, enclosed at once the greatest
riches and the greatest misery of the country, and where the angel of
death so long caused tears of gall to trickle into the mouth of the
believer, till every inch of earth in the dismal churchyard became the
ashes of men. At the end of the seventeenth century, near six thousand
industrious men dwelt there in a narrow space; the great money lenders,
as well as the poorest frippery dealers and porters, all closely united
in firm fellowship and common interests, indispensable to the
impoverished country, y