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expense of the work must restrict to a comparatively scanty number of readers a full share of the intellectual and artistic treat which we have so much enjoyed ourselves.

gave him an opportunity not only for the pearance of the first Inca (1040-42). We study of the geological features of the coun- may pass by the still bolder hypothesis try and the varieties of its native types, but which recognizes in the long and flowing also for the pursuit of researches into the robes of the Mexican sculptures the surplice anthropology and early conditions of life or albe of missionary priests despatched belonging to these regions. His treatment from Ireland. With the reign of the Inca's of these important problems will be found we come to the confines of trustworthy hisdeeply suggestive, as well as marked with tory, but to the present day the presence of careful and critical erudition. Are we to the twofold elements we have spoken of is consider the American race autochthonic, manifest upon the surface of the popular with Morton, Blumenbach, and Pritchard, life. The facts collected by M. Marcoy or can we hope to connect its origin with form valuable materials for the ethnologist, the better-known races of other continents? while the student of comparative philology Our author's convictions favour the hypoth- will find much to interest and instruct him esis of two fixed primordial types, both in the lists of words brought together by however of foreign introduction. The him from the principal Indian dialects. early geographical connexion of the two These features of the book confer upon it a continents, or the easy passage by the way scientific value far beyond that which we of Behring's Straits, renders any amount of are wont to attach to narratives of travel. immigration from the East readily intelli- We close M. Marcoy's handsome volumes gible. Whether we call it indigenous or not, with a grateful sense of what he has been the earliest and simplest of these types ex-at so much pains and cost to set before the hibits unmistakeable analogies with an Af-public. Our regret at parting with him is rican variety of the Mongol type of Asia, enhanced by the reflection that the bulk and the other a no less marked resemblance with the Irano-Arian type. In the former we trace the colonizing and stationary, in the latter the civilizing and progressive, element of the American population. Not only in their architecture and their religion, but in the physical peculiarities of their race, the earliest of these colonists betray a singular affinity with the Misraites (Children of the Sun) upon the banks of the CROMWELL AND THE JEWS.* Nile. Hieroglyphics and the pictorial arts ON a dark December day, three hundred are equally seen among them, and the pap- and four years ago, a body of men assemyrus (maguey) is naturalized among the bled in the long gallery of Whitehall to disflats of the Amazon. In addition to the cuss the darkest topic on which the wit of red race of the earliest age, both tradition Roundhead trooper and Puritan divine had and historic records point to a fair and ever been employed. Cromwell sat in the bearded variety, the naumo type, of Indo-chair of state. Below him were the Lord Iranian blood and speech. Quezalcoalt, the first legislator of the Aztecs, and Bochica, founder of the civilization of Cundinamarca, were both of the oriental type. The ancient Mexican sculptures of Tenochtitlan and of Culhuacan, with those of Tiahuanacu in Upper Peru, represent bearded personages clothed in the ample and flowing robes of the people of the East. It is beyond doubt to an origin of this twofold kind, and to one in either case of a remote antiquity, rather than to a mythical Scandinavian infusion from Iceland or Greenland in the twelfth century of our era, suggested by Rafn, that we are to assign the first traces of human life upon the Western continent. Still less can we venture to defer the period to so recent a date as that of the discovery of North America by Reif, son of Eric the Red, 1005 A. D., which has been connected by some theorists with the ap

From The Athenæum.

Chief Baron, the Lord Chief Justice Glynn, Lord Mayor Draper, Sheriff Thompson, and a host of preachers - Dr. Owen, Dr. Goodwin, Mr. Cradock, and others, then known to City madams and Whitehall beauties as the most popular preachers of their time. Well-worn Bibles lay before them on the board of green cloth; old monkish chronicles, old Acts of Parliament, old Court records, were also heaped about. The tomes had been searched for evidence; the best lawyers had been employed to state the case, and the Talmudists had been consulted as to facts. The purpose of the meeting was to deduce from the prophetical Scriptures, from the ancient Jewish writings, and from the actual statues of this realm, the

To his Highnesse the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Humble Address of Manasseh ben Israel, in behalfe of the Jewish Nation, 1655. (Trubner & Co.)

duty of English statesmen, living in a righteous commonwealth, towards the People of God.

of Hebrews leaving money to the convents. All the springs of charity were sealed. Only under the name of "King's men,” and very nearly in the position of slaves, were a few wealthy and useful families permitted to hold their ground. "The Jew, and all that he has, belong to the king," runs the law of Edward the Confessor,— a law which was certainly not a dead letter in the suc

The subject had been brought before Cromwell in a striking way. A learned Dutch Jew, called Manasseh ben Israel, had come over from Amsterdam to lay the cause of his people before the Council; and the Lord Protector, even in the stress of his great schemes, took up the tale, and sum-ceeding times. moned his big men of the law and divinity to debate the matter in his own presence.

In those days no Jew could openly live and trade in England. Now and then a Jew came over into the land; came over as a courtly physician, a princely traveller, or a wealthy goldsmith; but in order to evade the law, and deceive the mob, he had to put on a foreign air, and pass as either an Arab, an Italian, or a Portuguese. Spain herself had not whipped the holy race with sharper thongs than the island which once had been their happiest home.

No one knows when the Jews first came into England. They were here before the Norman Conquest. They were here when Hengist landed. It is probable that they were here before Cæsar came. Some writers derive the name of Britain from a Hebrew word: from Barat-anach, tin island, which would be very ingenious if either Barat meant tin, or anach island. When the Romans land, we get on safer ground. One of the edicts of Augustus speaks of the Jews in Britain. One of the Roman bricks dug up in Mark Lane has the story of Samson and the Foxes stamped upon it. Bede mentions the Jews in connexion with the great controversy on the tonsure. Egbert forbade the Saxon Christians to attend Jewish feasts; a fact which implies not only that we had synagogues and ceremonials in England, but that a friendly intercourse then existed between the native Christians and the native Jews. In the Crowland Abbey records there is an entry which proves - if the record itself be genuine that Jews could hold land, and that they were in the habit of endowing monks and nuns with some part of their wealth.

The first storm of persecution struck them when the Pagan Danes deflowered the island. Canute was not their friend. Some say he drove them from the country; and this is a legend which the Jews accept as true. It is hardly likely that all were sent away; but those who stayed behind were treated in a new and cruel spirit. The Jews were no longer free. They lost their right to hold land. They could no longer appeal to the courts of law. We hear no more of Christians going into the synagogues, and

The Jews made very slight progress in England until the Norman baron, with his strong arm and greedy maw, invited the rich traders and tiremen of that race from France. Crowds of Jews now settled in Stamford and in York; afterwards they came to Oxford and London; and during the first golden period of their return they occupied and enriched these cities by art and trade. In London they dwelt in two several places; both of which localities were determined by the fact of Jews being considered as the King's men," - not as ordinary citizens,- free of the ordinary law. One of their quarters lay in the City proper, the quarter off Cheapside, in which stood the ancient London Palace. This quarter was called from them the Jewry. They clustered about the old palace, because they were "the King's men," and found their only protection under the palace walls. The second-quarter, which lay beyond the City towards the east, was also a royal quarter, being close to the king's Tower, a part of London over which the Mayor and Aldermen had only a limited right of sway. When the prince was weak, the Jews fled into the Tower, which was sometimes crowded with Jews so closely that pestilence broke out, and scattered both the fugitives and their protectors to the four winds. When the prince was strong, his "men multiplied in number — swarming backward from the Tower ditch into the district now known as the Minories, and the swamp called Hounds' Ditch. The great merchants of the sacred race dwelt in the City, the poor hucksters and chapmen near the Tower. Hence the first quarter is called Old Jewry, the second quarter Poor Jewry.

Policy led the earlier Norman kings to befriend this gifted and useful race against monks and against the mob. Rufus, indeed, was so far attached to them that some writers fancy he had thoughts of becoming a Jew himself. But this is an inference from facts which bear a totally different construction. Rufus resisted any attempt to convert the Jews; and on a notable occasion he called before him certain converts in Rouen, and bade them return to the faith of their fathers; whence it has been inferred

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The The offences charged upon the Jews, and held to justify their expulsion from a country in which they had dwelt before the Norman baron and the Saxon yeoman came into the land, were such as to raise a smile in more considerate and more critical times. They debased the coin, they forestalled the markets, they gibed at images, they poisoned the wells, they strove to convert the Christians, they kidnapped young children, whom they sacrificed as burnt offerings.

that he was in favour of that faith. truth was, Rufus was in favour of "King's men." Jews were profitable clients, and Rufus had no wish to see their number reduced by conversion, in the reality of which he was not likely to believe. The story told of him shows that the question was one of money. Stephen, a Norman Jew, came to Rufus complaining that his son had quitted the synagogue, and offering the king a purse of sixty silver marks to persuade him back. Rufus took the silver, and sent One accusation roused the anger of the for the lad. 66 Sirrah," he cried, thy commons, a second justified suspicion in the father here complaineth that without his li- nobles. But our sires were far more ignocence thou art become a Christian; if this be rant and superstitious than unjust. Nine true, I command thee to return to the reli- out of every ten men in this kingdom begion of thy nation without more ado." lieved that Robert, of St. Edmund's Bury, Your Grace," said the young convert, was killed by the Jews, and that his blood "doth but jest." On which Rufus flushed was sprinkled on their altar, by the high up into sudden wrath: "What! thou dung- priest. Our fathers were not singular in hill knave, should I jest with thee? Get these beliefs. No page in the long story thee hence quickly, and fulfill my command- of popular delusions is more striking than ment, or by St. Luke's face I shall cause that which tells of the widely-spread conthine eyes to be plucked out." The young viction that Jews put men especially man would not turn from his new ways, boys and young men to death to get their even after such a threat; and when Stephen blood. This belief was found in Paris and saw that the king had failed in his promise, in Seville, in Alexandria and in Damascus, he asked for his money back. But Rufus just as it was found in Oxford and in Lonand silver marks were not to be parted. don. Nay, it is still to be found in the 'Why, man," said the king, "I did what South and in the East. Many persons in I could; " and on the old fellow saying that Rome, and yet more in Jerusalem, assure he must have either his son or his silver at you that the Passover cannot be properly the king's hands, Rufus gave him back thirty kept unless the cakes are mixed with Chrismarks to stop his mouth. tian blood. No Easter ever passes by without quarrels in Zion provoked by this superstition. The Greek and the Armenian cling to their old traditions, and every little fray in the Holy City between Jew and Christian leads to charge and countercharge, which the grave and impartial Turks have to decide according to their written law. A few years ago, these accusations were raised so often in Palestine, that the Sultan issued a commission of inquiry into the facts alleged and denied, when both sides were heard, the Jewish books were overhauled by muftis, and an imperial decree was issued, of which the pashas and kadis must take note, declaring that the Greek and Armenian allegations were untrue.

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Oxford was in that time almost a Jewish city. The best houses belonged to men of this race, who boarded the English students, and established schools for the study of Hebrew law. Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall were centres of learning. A great synagogue was built, and the Jews were popular with students and learned Great rabbis lectured on their faith, and two quarters of Oxford were known as the Old Jewry and the New Jewry.

men.

The Jews grew fat, and fat men are incautious. In the reign of Henry the First the monks began to show their teeth; and from this reign downward the Church led on the mob to attack the Jews. In the reign of Stephen they were fined and imprisoned; in the reign of Richard the First they were massacred; in the reign of John they were cheated and robbed; and so far forward until the reign of Edward the First, when they were finally expelled the kingdom, under pain of death. Then came a time of silence and exclusion. For three hundred years the law of England had no mercy on the Jew. He was an infidel, a cagot, a leper, a thing that could not live upon the English soil.

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daughters Miriam and Hephzebah. They regarded the Commonwealth as a new Israel; and Cromwell as a modern Joshua. Some of the foreign Jews partook_of these fancies. They thought the Lord Protector might prove to be their Messias, and they sent a deputation to England to make strict inquiry into Cromwell's pedigree, expecting to find in his ancestry some traces of He

which vulgar folk hold sacred. An Oxford Hebrew mocked St. Frideswide, saying he could cure as many sick persons as the saint herself. The legend runs that the mocking Jew went mad and hung himself in his own kitchen, which is perhaps a polite way of telling the tumultuous story of popular ire and priestly vengeance. Some of these learned men were learned in the way to excite suspicion; they were alchemists, sorcer-brew blood. Under his Protectorate they ers, and astrologers, and professors of ma- hoped to come back to their ancient Enggian art, dealers in charms and amulets, lish home. agents of the Seraglio and the Court. But their true offence was - they were rich. They were rich, and the world could not forgive them. The fact is, the Jew, who is by nature a shepherd and a vine-grower, -a man who delights in the pasture and the garden, and whose national poetry breathes of the tent, the flock, and the watercourse, - had been driven by abominable laws from the courses which he loved into the practice of acts which were originally foreign to his race. When a Hebrew could hold land of his own, he was neither a pedlar nor a money-lender. He sheared his own sheep, he planted his own olives, he pressed his own grapes, he threshed his own corn, Under that Roman law, which the Church sent into Western Europe, a Jew was forbidden to own land; hence he was driven into trades which his genius converted into a profitable calling. Most of all, he took to buying and selling money; to lending on interest and security -a vocation for which few men are naturally fit. The Jews were dealers in money, and nearly every man of influence in the Plantagenet Court was in their debt.

Cromwell sat in his chair of state, with the open Bible before him, and with a petition from a learned Jew in his hand. It was a very adroit petition, and the writer of it was a very ingenious_man. The petition began, in its queer English, referring to the words of Daniel-"Thou that removest kings and settest up kings," — facts which he hinted were allowed, -"to the end the living might know that the Highest hath dominion in man's kingdom and giveth the same to whom he pleases." It went on to say that no man becomes a governor of men unless he be first called to that office by God. It then proceeded to show that no ruler of men had ever been stable in his seat of power who was inimical to the holy race; and cited in proof of this strong assertion the cases of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Epiphanius, and Pompey. The paper went on to say that no country which favoured that race had ever failed to flourish, though it refrained from citing the examples of his second proposition. Lastly, it prayed the Lord Protector to repeal the laws, passed under the Kings, against the Jews, and to permit a syna

That was offence enough, and for this of-gogue to be built in London. fence they were driven into foreign lands. The author of this petition was Manasseh They were driven away from this island with ben Israel, a Jew of Portuguese descent, as much cruelty as their brethren afterwards then living in Amsterdam- a man of fine underwent in Spain. The Church put them culture and unquestionable piety. English to the ban-cursed them, plundered them, ambassadors had been received in the and drove them forth. For four hundred Dutch capital, not only by the Government, years that stern decree was held. But a but by the churches. Not the least eager change was coming for the holy race. The to hail the new Commonwealth were the Iron Age was almost past; and though the Hebrew merchants, and a grand reception golden prime was yet far off, the wiser spir- was accorded to her ministers in the synaits were looking for a brighter day. Lu-gogue. Manasseh took advantage of this ther, Cranmer, Calvin, all the great visit to urge upon Cromwell the recall of spirits of the Reformation had been the his people from their long exile. unconscious friends of Israel; and when the sentiment of respect for private judgment in affairs of faith had entered deeply into men's minds, a habit of toleration followed in its wake, of which the Hebrew found his share.

Cromwell favoured the petition. The Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chief Baron reported against maintaining the old statute of exclusion. The Lord Mayor and Sheriff declared that the City was willing to receive the Jews as brethren. But the The Puritans were warm admirers of the old enemies of the Jews were still strong, Jews. They talked Old Testament. They The clergy, even the Puritan clergy, could called their sons David and Abner; their not see their way to such liberal conces

rights, he could and would permit them to come in as "Protector's men." In that quality a few of them came back from Amsterdam and Leyden. Under Cromwell, they had no persecution to fear and no exactions to resist. They came back on sufferance only; but they soon established a character in London which made them many friends. In a few years, opinion underwent a change; the clergy lost their power; the old abominable laws were all repealed; and the Jew, who had ventured to come home as a Protector's man," became a peaceable and prosperous citizen of the realm.

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sions as the lawyers and citizens were prepared to make. To the divines, a Jew was a man of a stiff-necked race, who had rejected the true Messiah and put the Son of God to a shameful death. Owen, Cradock and their brethren turned over the leaves of prophecy. Manasseh had very skilfully fallen in with Puritan ways of thought; hinting that the Judgment was at hand, and the day of final reconciliation nigh. Cromwell, struck by this suggestion, urged the divines to adopt a healing policy; but the preachers held to the doctrine that the Jews were a God-abandoned people, unfit for association with Christian men. Cromwell's eloquence was highly praised; and Among the Jews themselves, Cromwell the subject being one which he knew, he is regarded as the man to whom, under probably spoke beyond his usual style; but God, they are chiefly indebted for their neither Glynn's law nor Cromwell's elo- happy return to a country which had cast quence availed in the presence of these hot them out for 400 years. But Cromwell divines. The clergy stood out; and even might never have called that conference in after Hugh Peters and two other advocates the Long Gallery of Whitehall had he not of Manasseh's scheme were added to the been urged by Manasseh ben Israel, the conference, the clergy were obstinate and pious and able Portuguese Jew; a copy of powerful enough to defeat Cromwell's plan. whose rather scarce Petition to His HighBut the Lord Protector was a law unto ness the Lord Protector has been reprinted himself. If a regular act_could not be ob- at Melbourne in Australia; a city which is tained, empowering the Jews to settle in more populous than Jerusalem, and which England once again, not as "King's men,' ," is built on a continent of which Manasseh but as citizens and equals, men with legal never heard the name.

COMETS' TAILS. Theories by scores, and wild | enough to make a philosopher's hair stand on end, have been proposed to account for the formation of comets' tails. Herschels and Airys are pestered with them, whenever a bearded star makes its appearance; and almost invariably the proposers are in a state of utter ignorance regarding the working of physical laws. It will be a treat to the astronomers to discuss a hypothesis which, if it should not eventually prove true, is at least philosophical, and based upon data acquired by experiment. Professor Tyndall has developed a cometary theory out of his late researches upon the actinic power of light. It will be remembered, says Once a Week, that he has found that a beam of light is capable of forming a bright glowing cloud in its course through a space containing a modicum of vapour, the said cloud being first reduced by the chemical action of the light, and then rendered visible by illumination of the condensed particles. The application of this principle to the explanation of cometary phenomena is as follows:- A comet is held to be a mass of vapour decomposable by the solar light, the visible head and tail being an actinic cloud resulting from such decomposition. The tail is not matter projected from the head, but matter precipitated on the solar beams which traverse the cometary atmosphere; nothing being carried from the

comet to form the tail, but something being deposited from the interplanetary space through which the body is coursing. But this explanation supposes that the sunlight has a different power when it has passed through a vapoury comet to that which it possesses when it has traversed no such medium; otherwise all space would be lit up like a canet's tail. To account for such a peculiar property, Professor Tydall assumes that the sun's heating and chemical powers are antagonistic, and that the calorific rays are absorbed more copiously by the head and nucleus than the actinic rays. This augments the relative superiority of the actinic rays behind the head and nucleus, and enables them to bring down the cloud which constitutes the tail. Thus the caudal appendage is in a perpetual state of renovation as the comet moves through space; the old tails being dissipated by the solar heat as soon as they cease to be screened by the nucleus. Nearly all the phenomena observed in those mysterious bodies are accounted for by Dr. Tyndall. One, however, be has not yet mentioned: I allude to the peculiar luminous envelopes, familiar to comet-gazers, which surround the nucleus like a series of cloudy glass cases. No theory can be called complete which does not account for those remarkable and evidently important features. Public Opinion.

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