like many other souls of my acquaintance, "embody and embrute." When the time for my quitting Cambridge arrived, I went to take leave of my learned friend Mr. Israel Lyons, and to offer him my grateful acknowledgments. In the course of the conversation I mentioned the childish terror and aversion with which I had been early taught to look upon a Jew. I rejoiced that, even while a schoolboy, I had conquered this foolish prejudice; and that at the university, during those years which often decide our subsequent opinions in life, it had been my good fortune to become acquainted with one whose superior abilities and kindness of disposition had formed in my mind associations of quite an opposite nature. Pleased with this just tribute to his merit, and with the disposition I showed to think candidly of persons of his persuasion, Mr. Lyons wished to confirm me in these sentiments, and for this purpose gave me a letter of introduction to a friend, with whom he was in constant correspondence, Mr. Montenero, a Jewish gentleman born in Spain, who had early in life quitted that country, in consequence of his horror of tyranny and persecution. He had been fortunate enough to carry his wealth, which was very considerable, safely out of Spain, and had settled in America, where he had enjoyed perfect toleration and freedom of religious opinion. He had travelled in almost every country in Europe, and joined extensive reading, and a cultivated taste for the arts, to a thorough knowledge of mankind and of the world—a knowledge which had not, as his friend assured me, lessened his natural generosity and benevolence of disposition; but, by enlarging his views, had increased his desire to be candid and tolerant, and given a certain suavity and polish to his manners, in which peculiar casts of people, as well as mere scholars or bookmen, are apt to be deficient. In short, according to Mr. Lyons' description of him, this Spanish Jew must, I thought be a most accomplished and amiable person. I eagerly accepted the offered letter of introduction, and resolved that it should be my first business and pleasure, on arriving in London, to find and make myself acquainted with Mr. Montenero. CHAPTER V. PEOPLE, like myself, of lively imaginations, may have often felt that change of place suddenly extin guishes or gives a new direction to the ardour of their enthusiasm. Such persons may, therefore, naturally suspect, that, as "my steps retired from Cam's smooth margin,” my enthusiasm for my learned rabbi might gradually fade away; and that, on my arrival in London, I should forget my desire to become acquainted with the accomplished Spanish Jew. But it must be observed that, with my mother's warmth of imagination, I also had, I will not say, I inherited, some of my father's "intensity of will." Some of that firmness of adhesion to a preconceived notion or purpose, which in a good cause is called resolution, in a bad cause obstinacy; and which is either a curse or a blessing to the possessor, according to the degree or habit of exercising the reasoning faculty with which he may be endowed. On my arrival in London a variety of petty unforeseen obstacles occurred to prevent my accomplishing my visit to the Spanish Jew. New and never ending demands upon my time arose, both in and out of my own family, so that there seemed a necessity for my spending every hour of the day and night in a manner wholly independent of my will. There seemed to be some fatality that set at nought all my previous plans and calculations. Every morniing, for a week after my arrival, I regularly put my letter of introduction to Mr. Montenero into my pocket, resolving that I would that day find him out, and pay my visit; but after walking all the morning, to bear and to forbear various engagements, to execute promised commissions, and to fulfil innumerable duties, I regularly came home as I went out, with my letter in my pocket, and with the sad conviction, that it was utterly impossible to deliver it that day. These obstacles, and this contrariety of external circumstances, instead of bending my will, or making me give up my intention, fixed it more firmly in my mind, and strengthened my determination. Nor was I the least shaken from the settled purpose of my soul by the perversity with which every one in our house opposed or contemned that purpose. One morning, when I had my letter and my hat in my hand, I met my father, who, after looking at the direction of the letter, and hearing that I was going on a visit to a Spanish Jew, asked what business upon earth I could have with a Jew-cursed the whole race-rejoiced that he had five-and-twenty years ago voted against their naturalization in England, and ended as he began, by wondering what in the name of Heaven could make me scrape acquaintance with such fellows. When, in reply, I mentioned my friend Mr. Israel Lyons, and the high character he had drawn of Mr. Montenero, my father laughed, saying that he would answer for it my friend Israel was not an Israelite without guile, that was a description of Israelite he had never yet seen, and he had seen a confounded deal of the world. He decided that my accomplished Spanish Jew would prove an adventurer, and he advised me, a young man, heir to a good English fortune, to keep out of his foreign clutches: in short, he stuck to the advice he gave me, and only wished I would stick to the promise I gave him, when I was ten years old, to have no dealings with the Jews. It was in vain that I endeavoured to give my explanation of the word dealings. My father's temper, naturally positive, had, I observed, become, as he advanced in years, much more dogmatic and intolerant. I avoided contradicting his assertions; but I determined to pursue my own course in a matter where there could be nothing really wrong or improper. That morning, however, I must, I perceived, as in duty bound, sacrifice to my father; he took me under the arm, and carried me away to introduce me to some commonplace member of parliament, who, as he assured me, was a much fitter and more profitableac quaintance for me than any member of the synagogue could possibly be. The next morning, when, firm to my purpose, I was sallying forth, my mother, with a face of tender expostulation and alarm, stopped me, and entreated me to listen to her. My mother, whose health had always been delicate, had within these three last years fallen into what is called a very nervous state, and this, with her natural timidity and sensibility, inclined her now to a variety of superstitious feelings -to a belief in presentiments and presages, omens and dreams, added to her original belief in sympathies and antipathies. Some of these her peculiarities of opinion and feeling had perhaps, at first, only been : assumed, or yielded to in her season of youth and beauty, to interest her admirers and to distinguish herself in society; but as age advanced, they had been confirmed by habit and weakness, so that what in the beginning might have been affectation was in the end reality. She was alarmed, she said, by the series of strange coincidences which, from my earliest childhood, had occurred, seeming to connect my fate, in some extraordinary manner, with these Jews. She recalled all the circumstances of my illness when I was a child she confessed that she had retained a sort of antipathy to the idea of a Jew—a weakness it might be-but she had had dreams and presentiments, and my fortune had been told her while I was at Cambridge; and some evil, she had been assured, hung over me within the five ensuing years-some evil connected with a Jew: in short, she did not absolutely believe in such prophecies, but still it was extraordinary that the first thing my mind should be iutent upon, in coming to town, should be a Spanish Jew, and she earnestly wished that I would avoid rather than seek the connexion. Knowing my mother's turn for the romantic, I had anticipated her delight at the idea of making acquaintance with a noble-minded travelled Spaniard; but unluckily her imagination had galloped off in a contrary direction to mine, and now my only chance was to make her hear reason, and a very bad chance I knew this to be. I endeavoured to combat her presentiment, and to explain whatever appeared extraordinary in my love and hatred of the Jews, by recalling the slight and natural circumstances at school and the university which had changed my early prejudice; and I laboured to show that no natural antipathy could have existed, since it had |