cally possible, for there were Jewish maidens sufficient in those days who, as the records report, bore suffering as resignedly, as bravely, as steadfastly. The character is woven in the wreath of poetic fancy; yet the separate attributes ascribed to her are all natural and womanly, and, taken all in all, make such a one as we could conceive the highest type of womanhood to be; her attachment to her father, her care for the poor, her attention to the wounded, her proud defiance of the evil doer, her enthusiasm for Israel's past, her deep piety, her trust in God, combine to produce so noble a woman, that of her we may say:

"From every one,

The best she hath, and she, of all compounded.

Outsells them all."

VI. DICKENS'S "OLIVER TWIST" AND "OUR MUTUAL FRIEND."

It has always appeared strange to me that in many instances, when the great English writers and fictionists had occasion to speak of the Jews, they did so in derogatory terms, and classed them with the lowest elements of society. Can it be that they were wilfully blind, or that they did it only for effect? Surely a community which is represented by the Montefiores, Solomons, Goldsmids, Magnus, Jessels, Cohens and Rothschilds, can not be so universally degraded that, when an especially disagreeable character is desired, he is described in unmistakable terms as one of this body. Carlyle was guilty of this in his Sartor Resartus, and in some of his later productions. Thackeray designates as Jews, bailiffs and keepers of debtors' prisons, personages of the lowest stamp, and has distorted Scott's beautiful romance by a silly 80called sequel, in which his hostile feelings plainly appear. A young writer, some fifty years ago, after having achieved phenomenal success in a new kind of literature, "The Pickwick Papers," presented to the public as the second production of his genius a work of an entirely different nature, a sensational story,

"Oliver Twist." Here and there appeared glimpses of the humor which had marked his earlier work, but, on the whole, the tale was cast in the mold of the horrible, and depended for its strength on the debased characters and the criminal life of which Fagin is the central figure.

It was eighteen years since Ivanhoe had appeared, and what a contrast between its Jewish personage and the character in this, the next work of a great English writer, in which a Jew plays a prominent rôle ! In the one the charm, in the other the disgrace of the work; in the one the possessor of all human virtues, in the other of all human vices; in the one fair in body and fairer in soul, in the other distorted in body and black in soul; the one a plea for kindness toward a community at that time still unrecognized as worthy of the rights of men and women, the other calculated to re-awaken all the old thoughts, if ever they had died out, of the baseness and wickedness of the Jews.

It is not necessary to give a detailed account of the story of the adventures of Oliver Twist, of Bill and Nancy Sykes, of Mr. Bumble and his offices, of Fagin and his precious pupils, the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates; all that interests us here is the character of Fagin, who is continually obtruded upon our notice as "the Jew." Were the miscreant, whenever introduced upon the scene, merely spoken of as Fagin, we would look upon him as an example

of London's criminal class, and there would be nothing further to arrest our special attention. He would be to us nothing more nor less than a wicked wretch, who led youths astray, enjoyed the fruits of others' wrong-doing, whom he instigated; with no redeeming qualities, a coward, a thief, well nigh a murderer. We would consider his punishment deserved, as it is, and that graphic description of his last night alive, as one of the strongest, though at the same time one of the most horrible chapters in the range of fiction. Our whole concern with the novel would be to judge it upon its literary merits, the strength of its characters, the correctness of its situations. It would be as the many others of the productions of the masters of fiction; but for one reason the work is somewhat more than

this to us. Our interest does not cease here.

We have to do with the Jew.

The author presented this character as a Jew, and hence has laid himself open to the charge of gross wrong and injustice. The fact of Fagin being a Jew does not make him what he is; but when the novel was written such an idea was far from being deemed impossible. The Jew was still an unknown quantity; people thought him sui generis; it was not known, according to popular opinion, what he was likely to do.

All ideas formed of the Jews, if any were held at all, were gathered from hostile writings, or were due to prejudice. It was only the few,

the very few, who could rise to the height of the thought of humanity and see in them the man, without regard to the religion which had been taught by churchmen to have outlived its usefulness and to have been clung to with an obstinacy that was reprehensible. But six years before the publication of this novel, in spite of the most strenuous efforts of Robert Grant, Macaulay, and their confrères of the Liberal or Whig party, it was found impossible to have a bill granting full emancipation to the Jews passed in Parliament. In the country beyond the cities, into which the Jews had not yet penetrated, we may be sure that the most grotesque opinions concerning them were entertained. A work such as this, which was read every-where and by every body, could not fail, therefore, in deepening the unfavorable impression, for the mass of the people think not deeply; they are swayed by sentiments and prejudices, which, deep-rooted, are long in being eradicated. The influence for evil was, without doubt, incalculable, for the villain was a Jew, and, if one were such, it was concluded that all were.

The world still deemed the Jews capable of the greatest crimes, for it was but three years after this book was written that the terrible Damascus affair took place, in 1840, and there were many in Europe who believed the story that the Jews had murdered the monk, Father Thomas, to use his blood at the Passover Feast (for, in