ified in nothing
more than in what it is producing amongst Jews, Gypsies, and Quakers. It
is breaking up their venerable communities. All the better, some one
will say. Alas! alas! It is making the wealthy Jews forsake the
synagogue for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a
disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at noon-
day from a desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is making
them abandon their ancient literature, their "Mischna," their "Gemara,"
their "Zohar," for gentility novels, "The Young Duke," the most
unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite.
It makes the young Jew ashamed of the young Jewess, it makes her ashamed
of the young Jew. The young Jew marries an opera-dancer, or if the
dancer will not have him, as is frequently the case, the cast-off Miss of
the Honourable Spencer So-and-so. It makes the young Jewess accept the
honourable offer of a cashiered lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry;
or, if such a person does not come forward, the dishonourable offer of a
cornet of a regiment of crack hussars. It makes poor Jews, male and
female, forsake the synagogue for the sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the
Jew to take up with an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess
with a musician of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain
Mulligan. With respect to the gypsies, it is making the women what they
never were before--harlots; and the men what they never were
before--careless fathers and husbands. It has made the daughter of
Ursula the chaste take up with the base drummer of a wild-beast show. It
makes Gorgiko Brown, the gypsy man, leave his tent and his old wife, of
an evening, and thrust himself into society which could well dispense
with him. "Brother," said Mr. Petulengro to the Romany Rye, after
telling him many things connected with the decadence of gypsyism, "there
is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face as black as a tea-kettle, wishes
to be mistaken for a Christian tradesman; he goes into the parlour of a
third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum and water, and attempts to
enter into conversation with the company about politics and business; the
company flout him and give him the cold shoulder, or perhaps complain to
the landlord, who comes and asks him what business he has in the parlour,
telling him if he wants to drink to go into the tap-room, and perhaps
collars him and kicks him out, prov