nts of Abraham are subjected in Rome, down to the present hour.
Inquisitors are appointed to search into and examine all their books;
all Rabbinic works are forbidden them, the Old Testament in Hebrew only
being allowed to them; and any Jew having any forbidden book in his
possession is liable to the confiscation of his property. Nor is he
permitted to converse on the subject of religion with a Christian. They
are not permitted to bury their dead with religious pomp, or to write
inscriptions on their tombstones; they are forbidden to employ Christian
servants; and if they do anything to disturb the faith of a Jewish
convert to Romanism, they are subject to the confiscation of all their
goods, and to imprisonment with hard labour for life; they are not
allowed to sell meat butchered by themselves to Christians, nor
unleavened bread, under heavy penalties; nor are they permitted to sleep
a night beyond the limits of their quarters, nor to have carriage or
horses of their own, nor to drive about the city in carriages, nor to
use public conveyances for journeying, if any one object to it.

Enter the Ghetto, and you feel instantly that you are among another
race. An indescribable languor reigns over the rest of Rome. The Romans
walk the streets with their hands in their pockets, and their eyes on
the ground, for a heavy heart makes the limbs to drag. But in the Ghetto
all is activity and thrift. You feel as if you had been suddenly
transported into one of the busiest lanes of Glasgow or Manchester.
Eager faces, with keen eyes and sharp features, look out upon you from
amid the bundles of clothes and piles of all kinds of articles which
darken the doors and windows of their shops. Scarce have you crossed the
threshold of the Ghetto when you are seized by the button, dragged
helplessly into a small hole stuffed with every imaginable sort of
merchandise, and invited to buy a dozen things at once. No sooner have
you been let go than you are seized by another and another. The women
were seated in the doors of their shops and dwellings, plying busily
their needle. One fine Jewish matron I marked, with seven buxom
daughters round her, all working away with amazing nimbleness, and
casting only a momentary glance at the stranger as he passed. How
inextinguishable the qualities of this extraordinary people! Here, in
this desolate land, and surrounded by the overwhelming torpor and
laziness of Rome, the Jews are as industrious and as in