words expressive of a gentle contempt for an unworthy scion of an ancient house. The contempt from you I can bear; but the smile by which you seem to enjoy what you are pleased to term my credulity, I must say and believe is wasted. For, more than once have I been assured by some of my own tribe that, but for a something in my eye, they should not suspect me to be other than a Roman. Neither, my mother, was this flattery; it was from some incapable of that meanest vice; from my real friends. But whoever were so blind as to take me for a Roman, you may be assured I was not careful to undeceive them. I enjoyed the perfect felicity while I might. And the dream was undisturbed during the whole of my sojourn there, except in a single instance, when once as I was walking in front of the baths of Tiberius, I saw approaching from an opposite point the lordly Drusus, who, as I gave signs of saluting him, turned his face in another direction, and swept along without recognising me. What think you of that? at this distance I can see your color change. But if you even feel the insult, who live so shut out from the great world, how much more must I who am in it. I think your censure is too sharp upon me, when at such moments I, somewhat hastily perhaps, wish the twelve tribes had found the fate of

Pharaoh, seeing that to little else than scorn and curses, hatred and oppression, are they born who come of their lineage. Willingly would I renounce all the wisdom I have ever found in Moses and the prophets, for a little of that equal honor in the eyes of men, which more methinks than questions of philosophy or religion concerns a man's well-being. My eye is not far reaching enough to discern a single advantage in the position the Jew fills in this great theatre of life. He cherishes in his soul his faith, which he holds to be nobler and purer than that of Pythagoras or Cicero. But however much nobler and purer in his own eye, when did other than a Jew so esteem it? Who ever has heard of Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians becoming Jews, and receiving - save in numbers most inconsiderable the Jewish faith? Yet is it likely that through so many ages a religion given of God should have remained in the world, and not have convinced men of its divinity? I, alas, have not even a conviction of its truth to sustain me under this burden of contempt and reproach. I am a Jew outwardly, carrying the signs of my descent and origin in my face and form, branded in by the Hand that made me, and by the hand that reared me, and this I cannot help. But with readiness would I lose one half my limbs, if

from what remained these scars and seams of ignominy were fairly erased. You say that in Rome I mix freely with the Roman youth, that I sit at their tables and they at mine, that I join them at the games, and in every amusement of our city life. It is true; yet still I am a Jew. I am beloved of many because I am Julian; yet by the very same am I abhorred because I am a Jew. The Roman beggar who takes my gold, for gold is gold, begs pardon of the gods, and as he turns the corner scours the coin upon the sand. Yet, my mother, I see not why one people should thus proscribe another; nor do I look upon the wrong but with indignation. You justly accuse me with indifference to the religion of my fathers. But I have never beheld with patience the slights, insults, and oppressions which, by the stronger, have been heaped upon the weaker; nor, truly, when I reflect, can I see why the worship of a people should be charged upon them as a crime. It is these injuries which have roused within me, at times, the Jew-however for the most part in my search after pleasure, I have been too ready to forget all but what ministered directly to that end. If thou art filled with wonder at so serious a vein in me, I will soon give thee the reasons thereof; but let me first speak of my passage hither, and of that which happened immediately on my arrival.

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I left Antioch, as I have said, with regret. At the mouth of the Orontes I embarked in a trader, bound to Cæsarea, and then to Joppa and Alexandria. We at first were driven out to sea by an east wind, and ran quite along the shores of Cyprus; but this soon subsiding, we crossed over again to the Syrian coast, and were afterwards enabled to keep our vessel so near,the breezes being gentle and from a safe quarter, that I enjoyed a continued prospect of the country, with as much distinctness and satisfaction, methinks, as if I had been travelling by land; at least with distinctness enough, for every pleasure of this sort is increased by a certain degree of obscurity and dimness. Painters understand this, and over their works throw a sort of haze by some mysterious process of their divine art, which imparts to them their principal charm. No prospect and no picture is beautiful which is clear and sharp as if cut in metal. Truth itself is to me improved by a veil of this same mistiness thrown around it. But if any fault is to be found with this Syrian atmosphere, it is that of this all-involving dimness there is something too much, to that degree, indeed, that the eye is often cheated of the distant features of the landscape, -the mountains which, drawn upon the chart defore us, we know to be not far distant, not too far for the eye to reach with

ease, being cut off entirely by this purple wall of partition. Happily, as we drew near the port of Berytus, beyond which lay the mountains of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus, there was not so much of the quality of which I speak in the air, as to deprive us of a view of their summits, crowned with their snowy caps, filling the whole eastern horizon. It was a magnificent mountain scene, a fitting vestibule, you will say, my mother, through which to enter the holy land of Moses and Abraham. It was, I am obliged to confess, with emotions such as I had never experienced before, that I found myself now for the first time gazing upon the shores of this wonderful people, the home of my fathers. It was beautiful to the eye, as we skirted the coast, as one long continued garden. The rich agriculture of the husbandman was pushed out to the very sands of the sea-beach, and every cape, and promontory, and lofty peak, showed, sparkling in the sun, the white walls of a village or some insulated dwelling, proving how thickly peopled must be the country, which could spare its inhabitants for the cultivation of spots naturally barren and inhospitable, but now by the hand of industry changed to a soil not less fertile than that of Italy. I could not but wish that, if it were decreed I must be a Jew, I had