which are scattered bands of ruthless robbers. Park's discovery of a great river running in a contrary direction to what had been supposed in modern times, and which was therefore concluded to be the Niger of the ancients, gave a celebrity to this re-discovered stream to which it now appears to have little claim, either for its size, or its direction, or the length of its course; its size about Noofé being not more than two-thirds the width of the Thames at Westminster Bridge; its direction easterly, discontinued at or near Timbuctoo; and if it actually does reach the sea somewhere in the bight of Benin, which is still very doubtful, the whole length of its course does not exceed two thousand miles. This last point cannot, however, long remain unsettled; the easy and frequent communication that will now be held with the rivers in that bight from the new establishment on Fernando Po, will induce some enterprising young man, or some commercial agent, to penetrate beyond Gatto, on the river Benin, which at present seems to be the ultima Thule of that stream. One hundred miles beyond this place will afford data on which to decide this question. Clapperton has had the singular merit of penetrating, in the course of the two expeditions, directly through the heart of northern Africa, from Tripoli to the bight of Benin, and from the shores of the Tsad to Soccatoo. Nearly all to the eastward of this lake is still a terra incognita; but a Frenchman of the name of Linant, employed by the African Association, has been up the Bahr-el-Abiad to a very considerable distance, and would have proceeded further had not the shallow state of the river in the dry season obliged him to return from a part of it where its surface was spread out to a vast expanse,-his barge, with which he had passed the cataracts of the Nile, drew too much water. We suspect, however, that, like Mr. Oxley, in his attempt to trace the Macquarrie in New South Wales, Linant had got out of the main channel and was unable to recover it. He is disposed to think, from its easterly direction, that it proceeds from the Lake Tsad; and he is about to renew the examination of the intermediate country by means of camels. He describes the shores of the Bahr-el-Abiad as rich and well cultivated, abounding with herds of cattle, and we do not hear that he met with any opposition from the natives. If he should succeed in reaching the Tsad, and thus ascertain a water communication with the Nile, we shall then not only have fixed numerous geographical positions from the east and west, as well as from the north and south extremities of North Africa, but be acquainted with every thing that is worth knowing of that land of slavery, disease, and death. VOL. XXXVIII. NO. LXXV. I ART. ART. V.—Geschichte, Lehren, und Meinungen der Juden, von Peter Beer. Leipsig. 8vo. 1825. I LOOK upon that people (the Jews) with astonishment and reverence; they are living proofs of facts most ancient and most interesting to mankind. Wherever we have a Jew on the surface of the earth, there we have a man whose testimony and whose conduct connect the present time with the beginning of all time.' So says Bishop Watson, expressing what must ever have been the sentiment of a rational Christian. But there are many circumstances which concur to render the condition of the ancient people of God a subject of more than ordinary interest at the present time. Their actual numbers may perhaps not exceed six millions→ numbers, however, probably greater than those over which Solomon reigned;-and of these six millions there may be resident in the contiguous countries of Moravia, ancient Poland, the Crimea, Moldavia and Wallachia, above three millions. Except within the countries which formed Poland before its partitions, their population contained in any one European kingdom cannot, therefore, be great. Yet so essentially are they one people, we might almost say one family; and so disposable is their wealth, as mainly vested in money transactions, that they must be considered as an aggregate, and not in their individual portions.* Would that one bond of this people of most tenacious memory were not an indignant and resentful feeling of the cruelties and persecutions heaped on them in old times by various nations of the earth, and not least by our European ancestors; and fixed on their minds by the contempt and slight of an age which abhors the name of barbarity! Is it too much to say, that we have rather left them amongst ourselves as vermin, which we know not how to get rid of, than regarded and treated them as the children of a common Father? We have not even afforded them any portion of that compassion which usage and opinion would require that we should at least appear to feel for fallen greatness. The man of the world must admit in his phraseology, on the case being intelligibly laid before him, that we have shown bad taste in this matter. But if they are kept together in some measure by the sense of their wrongs, it is hope wrought up by faith to the highest degree of certainty, that forms the most powerful bond of their identity, and constitutes them a nation apart, which can be bound to no Gentile government by permanent ties of citizenship. *Such are their union, activity, and multiplied relations with each other, that Frederick the Great states, that the Jews were always beforehand with him in obtaining intelligence. This feeling exists so strongly, and with such increasing intenseness, that many Jews of late years, under the persuasion that the accomplishment of the prophecies of the restoration of Israel is at hand, have actually transported their wealth and their families to Syria, quitting the milder rule of European governments for the exactions and tyranny of a Turkish bassa. Twenty years ago there was at Saffet* and Jerusalem but a small number of Polish Jews; some few hundreds at the most; there are now, at the very least, ten thousand. These eager expectations place them greatly at the mercy of every political adventurer who may, for his own purposes, undertake to work upon them; witness, within these very few years, the extraordinary effect of an address from a pretended Jewish prince, stated to rule over an independent kingdom in Asia, which was mysteriously circulated amongst the Jews in Poland. The greatest accumulation of them on any one point in Europe is in the countries of ancient Poland, now forming Russian, Austrian, and Prussian Poland, and the modern kingdom of Poland under the sceptre of the Emperor of Russia. It is stated by Beer, that many centuries ago a considerable body of Jews migrated from France into Germany, whence many of their descendants passed into Poland; but they must have remained long in Germany before this second swarm hived itself in Poland, as the language of the Polish Jews, called Jewish-German, though written in the rabbinical characters, is fundamentally a German dialect, with a slight intermixture of Hebrew and other elements, and particularly of Polish, in proportion as you travel farther north. The colony obtained considerable privileges of Casimir the Great, who married the beautiful Jewess Esther; † and from this stock, as their language proves, must have descended the great mass of the Polish Jews. There are great numbers of Jews in the parts of Turkey contiguous to Poland; but there they literally swarm; they are innkeepers, tradesmen, distillers of brandy, brewers, horse-dealers, money-changers, usurers, as every where else; some very few of them are farmers of the soil. Their numbers have increased of late years so rapidly as greatly to alarm and embarrass the governments of countries which afford but slender resources for a population so averse to be engaged in tillage. The evil of this immense accumulation of such a people, having one common interest and feeling, both of which are foreign * The ancient Bethulia, considered as an holy city by the Jews. + It is a curious proof of this monarch's spirit of toleration, or deference to his wife, that whilst he educated as Christians two sons, whom he had by her, he allowed their sister to be brought up in the faith of her mother, whom, however, he afterwards murdered in a fit of fury. to the interests and feelings of the citizens of the state, is felt, especially by the Russian government. The crowds of Jews in some of the towns of Russian Poland, and the miserable mode of existence of the greater part of them, have been forcibly depicted of late. It seems clear that, while, with such an augmentation of their population, they must be the more disposed to seek their fortunes elsewhere, their hosts also must be the more disposed to get rid of them if they can. It is to be observed, moreover, that they are thus placed in the midst of precisely that Christian population-the Polish-where, of late, the national feelings have been the most wounded, and the interests of the great proprietors the most deeply injured and sacrificed, and where, therefore, the whole frame of society is especially precarious and liable to violent changes, such as the Israelites look forward to as precursors to their deliverance. The essentially aristocratical existence of the whole Polish nation tends decidedly to prevent the Jews rising into consequence. There is no middle class in it, unless we consider as such that which the Jews have imperceptibly formed, but which is one eminently unqualified to be useful as a blending medium between the Christian nobles and the Christian serfs. Their mental developement and civilization greatly exceed those of the lower orders of Poles, because they have an education, however perverted. They are described as being in general, physically, a fine and active people, such as would contrast most advantageously with the ricketty figures which, formerly at least, were seen in the public walks in Holland. The comeliness of the Jewesses in Warsaw is much celebrated; and Bishop James describes the Volhynian Jews as a particularly fine race of men, and their women as remarkable for beauty in figure, features and complexion. In general, the Jews in Poland affect no external show, except in the dress of their women, but, as of old, those of them who are wealthy, live at home in considerable splendour.* The state of Germany, as to commerce and civilization, has been very beneficial to the Jews; their wealth, in its leading cities, has long been well known, and of late has attracted more attention than they would, perhaps, have wished. Since the time of Mendelsohn, many of them have studied with much success in its universities; of these Professor Neander, now a Christian, may be cited as a very creditable specimen; and many young Jews fought in the armies which delivered Germany from the yoke of Buonaparte, with a courage and intelligence of which several of them *This is natural to men so circumstanced. Not long since a Jew was found at Jerusalem leading a life of much luxury, in a house with a broken staircase, in a small obscure street. bear bear the honourable records in the decorations they have earned. Many Jews have studied and practised medicine with success. The distresses of the noble holders of land, occasioned by French occupation and contributions, and the preceding and subsequent wars, all of which bore with peculiar weight upon Prussia, caused permission to be granted there to the Jews, the great holders of ready money, whose property, too, is the least tangible and exposed to spoliation, to purchase manors (rittergüter), which conferred a new splendour and consistence on their existence. It was, however, subsequently found necessary to suspend the exercise of one of the privileges attached to the possession of these estates-the gift of the spiritual benefices appertaining to themas long as they should be unconverted, and for very obvious reasons. But when these feudal properties, besides many of the finest houses in the German capitals, passed thus into Israelitish hands, it was in the course of things that the people should view with envy and indignation these foreign unbelieving money-changers climbing up on the pedestals from which the statues of Christian knights and barons of ancient race had been hurled down by the storms which shook their native land to its centre. Besides this, circumstanced as the Jews were, it was to be expected that they would enter largely into the contracts made by the French government for the prosecution of its military enterprises, and that this conduct of theirs would be highly offensive to the German patriots. These causes, therefore, and somewhat here and there of that ostentation and indiscretion which seem to be almost inseparable from the enjoyment of suddenly acquired wealth, had indisposed the minds of men towards them; and this more than any one was aware of, until riotous proceedings against them broke out, first at Meiningen, and then at Wurtzburg, in 1820, and spread to the Rhine. These were, however, soon suppressed, and, except at Hamburgh, the vigilance of the governments of the north of Germany prevented their extension thither, in despite of an evident disposition to them-a tendency, indeed, which burst out into action at Copenhagen. It is curious, that the old cry of Hep, Hep,' was at this time revived against the Jews, after a disuse of so many centuries. The Jews are subject to military conscriptions in Germany; their civil predicament has occupied much of the attention of the governments; various regulations have been introduced for the improvement of their condition, and especially for the promotion of education among them; and the old restraints and *Hep is supposed to be the contraction of Hierosolyma Est Perdita. This was the cri-de-guerre used on the Rhine, and particularly at Mentz, in a rising against the Jews, accompanied by extensive massacre and spoliation, in the twelfth century. inhibitions |