presentations--Count
Ouvaroff's Views--Sir Moses again writes to Count
Kisseleff--Sir Moses is created a Baronet 385

DIARIES OF
Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH OF SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE AT LEGHORN--HIS FAMILY--EARLY
YEARS.

The neighbourhood of the Tower of London was, a hundred years ago, the
centre of attraction for thousands of persons engaged in financial
pursuits, not so much on account of the protection which the presence
of the garrison might afford in case of tumult, as of the convenience
offered by the locality from its vicinity to the wharves, the Custom
House, the Mint, the Bank, the Royal Exchange, and many important
counting-houses and places of business. For those who took an interest
in Hebrew Communal Institutions, it possessed the additional advantage
of being within ten minutes or a quarter of an hour's walk of the
Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and the Great German Synagogue,
together with their Colleges and Schools, and several minor places of
worship.

Tower Hill, the Minories, and the four streets enclosing the Tenter
Ground were then favourite places of residence for the merchant; and
in one of these, Great Prescott Street, lived Levi Barent Cohen, the
father of Judith, afterwards Lady Montefiore.

He was a wealthy merchant from Amsterdam, who settled in England,
where fortune favoured his commercial undertakings.

In his own country his name is to this day held in great respect. He
not only during his lifetime kept up a cordial correspondence with his
friends and relatives--who were indebted to him for many acts of
kindness--but, wishing to have his name commemorated in the House of
Prayer by some act of charity, he bequeathed a certain sum of money to
be given annually to the poor, in consideration of which, he desired
to have some of the Daily Prayers offered up from the very place which
he used to occupy in the Synagogue of his native city.

He was a man, upright in all his transactions, and a strict adherent
to the tenets of his religion. He was of a very kind and sociable
disposition, which prompted him to keep open house for his friends and
visitors, whom he always received with the most generous hospitality.
He was first married to Fanny, a daughter of Joseph Diamantschleifer
of Amsterdam, by whom he had three children: two sons, Solomon and
Joseph, and one daughter, Fanny.

Solomon became the father-in-law of the late Sir Da