they are compelled, by the Pope, to pay to the States of the Church. In common with all the English visitants at Rome, who chose to be present, I had an opportunity, four winters since, of witnessing a ceremony which made a deep impression on my mind. It was one in which it is annually pretended to display the superiority of the Christian over the Jewish religion.

The palace where we assembled, a part of which is the foundation of the ancient Roman treasury, stands on the Capitol, the most celebrated of the seven hills of the Eternal City. At one end of its most spacious hall there sat enthroned the senator* of Rome, the highest civil magistrate. Before this representative of Antichrist kneeled four venerable Rabbies, dressed in the attire of their highest and holiest festivals; there seemed to settle down upon their expressive countenances, the melancholy of felt humiliation, mingling with conscious dignity, while the oldest of them read, on bended knees, a petition couched in the humblest terms, and pleading that the Jews might be allowed to remain another year in Rome. Rising, with the pride of delegated authority and with a look of tyranny, the senator read a letter from the Pope, in which he condescended to prolong the stay of God's ancient people for another year in Rome, provided their conduct should be submissive and orderly, and on condition that they should pay a certain sum as tribute-money. Before leaving the posture of suppliants, the venerable four presented each a bunch of flowers to the senator-I suppose in token of their gratitude, and as a pledge that the tribute would be forthcoming. That very day the sum was paid, and the week after it was expended on the races of the Carnival, where it is difficult to say whether cruelty

*The Senate of the ancient Romans is now reduced to a single person. He presides in the courts of justice. He must be a foreigner, and is usually a man of high rank, and is appointed by the pope. Yet they affect to say he represents the people, and they parade the letters S. P. Q. R., both in inscriptions and processions.-Burton's Antiquities of Rome, vol. I. p. 117,-[AM. ED.]

or folly predominates. During the middle ages, the Pope used, on the occasion above alluded to, to place his foot upon the necks of the Rabbies; but although this revolting ceremony has fled before the light of the nineteenth century, still the Jews are confined within a walled enclosure in the filthiest part of the city, on the banks of the Tiber; sentinels are stationed at the two gates; and none of them must be seen upon the streets after ten o'clock at night, and before a certain hour in the morning: and all this in that city over which presides the head of the Romish church throughout the world.*

In thus introducing our subject to your notice, we have mentioned these three features in the present condition of the Jews, namely, their scattered state, their degradation both by Mahometanism and Popery, and their worldly-mindedness, in order that we may have some idea of the difficulties with which they have to struggle in rising in the scale of intellect, morality, and religion. If, however, it can be proved, as it may be, that, notwithstanding all the adverse peculiarities of their situation, they hold a high place as a well educated and learned people-if it can be shown that the Jewish mind is buoyant and elastic beneath the oppressive tread of centuries, then we are furnished with another argument for the miraculousness and singularity of the Jewish character; and we are led to the unavoidable conclusion, that as long as a nation retains a love for its religion, even although that religion should be far from being free from error, there is no danger of its sinking into such ignorance and barbarism, as would have been its fate if it had parted with that leavening and redeeming quality.

In looking abroad over the Judaism of the world,

* Since the above was written, we have seen the following paragraph in an English newspaper of the 29th of March. "The Baron de Rothschild was presented to the Pope during his stay at Rome. The Israelites, before his departure, profited by the Baron's presence to obtain from his Holiness his permission to work at their different trades; at the same time, the Pope gave alms to the poor Jews residing there."

besides several smaller sects into which it is divided, we observe that there are three classes which comprise the great mass of the Jews; and therefore to these three divisions, with a view to the discovery of their intellectual, moral, and religious state and character, we shall now direct our attention.

With the exception of a sect called the Caraites, Rabbinism, to a greater or less extent, prevails among all the rest of the Jews. When we speak of Rabbinism and its adherents, we mean Pharisaism and the successors of the Pharisees. A blind or a more enlightened respect for the traditions of the Talmud is the distinguishing feature of Rabbinism, while the Caraites have always refused to place any confidence in tradition, and profess to draw their doctrines from the pure fountain of the Mosaic writings. Hence arises the threefold division into Caraites, Rabbinical, and Reformed Jews; the first denying the authority of tradition altogether the second placing it on a level with the word of God-and the third class applying to it unceremoniously the pruning-knife of rationalism, and cutting away the absurdities with which it every where abounds.

We shall, in the first place, refer to the state and character of the smallest division, named Caraites. They have received this appellation, which means Textualists, or Scripturists, or Readers; or, as they very beautifully call themselves, "Children of the Bible," because they remain in a state of secession from the chief body of the Jewish nation, on the ground of their great attachment to the Scriptures.

The number of this sect over all the world is not believed to exceed that of the Rabbinical Jews in London alone. Their places of residence are the Crimea, Lithuania, and Persia; Damascus, Constantinople, and Cairo; and, according to the missionary Wolff, there exists a small establishment of them even in Jerusalem itself. To speak of the habitation of a Jew-to assign any portion of the earth as a locality to him, who, in virtue of the decree of Heaven, ranks as a wanderer among the nations, is to use language

not at once intelligible. Yet true it is, while all the rest of the Jews have been driven hither and thither, and have found rest only in the grave, that the Caraites appear to have long enjoyed their humble settlements; one party of them has reposed some hundreds of years on the margin of a beautiful lake in Lithuania; for many centuries has another nestled in felt security on the mountain-rock of the Crimea; while a third is said to have inhabited the desert of Hit, near the site of Babylon, from the time of Cyrus. The picturesque fortress of the Caraites in the Crimea, called the Jews' Castle, has been beautifully described by the celebrated traveller, Dr. Clarke, who tells us, that, in a sepulchral grove on the mountainside, there stands a tombstone, bearing a Hebrew inscription, the date of which reaches back more than six hundred years.

In the history of this people, there is something evidently peculiar with reference to the judgments of God. Might not their circumstances in some measure be accounted for by the following fact? During the reign of the empress Catherine, a communication was made to the Russian government, in which the Caraites declared that their ancestors had taken no part in the crucifixion of Christ; and, according to the testimony of Dr. Clarke, they uniformly give out that their forefathers stepped aside from the main body of the Jewish people in the very earliest periods of their history. This is corroborated by Wolff. On his discovery of the original stock of Caraites, they told him that their ancestors had indeed shared in the Babylonish captivity, but that, alarmed at the influx of new doctrines amongst their brethren, they gave themselves up to a closer and more constant perusal of the Scriptures alone; that they did not return to the Holy Land along with the rest of the Jews, when the term of their bondage had expired, but had remained ever since that time on the spot where he found them. "By the rivers of Babylon they sat down; yea, they wept when they remembered

Zion." Now, considering that the Caraites are not a proverb and a by-word among the nations where they dwell, but on the contrary, that they are every where respected by their gentile neighbours, and appear to be an industrious, honest, and hospitable race, is it inconceivable that they are not descendants of those who called down vengeance on their own heads, and on the heads of their posterity, when they cried aloud to Pilate, "His blood be on us and on our children?" Would not the foregoing remarkable feature in their history seem rather to have excluded them from the company of such as are lying under the infliction of the last curse, while, nevertheless, they live confessedly in a state of banishment from the beloved land of Israel?

With respect to the morality of this singular people, Wolff says, that they are distinguished, on the admission of the Arabs themselves, for such veracity as raises them far above any thing like Arab rivalry. From all the inquiries that have yet been made, according to a certain Christian writer, there rests not a stain on the name of Caraite from its appearance in the calendar of crime. They are vilified on all hands by their brethren of the Jewish faith, being regarded by them in the light of heretics; but it is easy from the calumnious language of the one to demonstrate the superior morality of the other. The head and front of their offending, according to the Rabbinical Jews, appears to be, that they adhere with scrupulous pertinacity to the written law, and decline to subscribe to the authority of the Talmud, both in its explanations and additions. In opposition to the Rabbies, who teach that a wife may be dismissed at the will of her husband, and that a fairer rival, or

a

the fault in her household economy, is a legiti

mate ground for putting asunder those whom God has joined together, the Caraites maintain that a divorce can be justified by adultery alone. Moreover, their teachers are chargeable with delivering dis

*Psalm cxxxvii. 1.