the
aftermath of its centuries of dominance, the sequel of that long
cruel night in Jewry which coincides with the Christian Era. If
they are not the Children, they are at least the Grandchildren of
the Ghetto.

The particular Ghetto that is the dark background upon which our
pictures will be cast, is of voluntary formation.

People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are
not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor
to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges.
The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of
their being. But a minority will pass, by units, into the larger, freer,
stranger life amid the execrations of an ever-dwindling majority. For
better or for worse, or for both, the Ghetto will be gradually
abandoned, till at last it becomes only a swarming place for the poor
and the ignorant, huddling together for social warmth. Such people are
their own Ghetto gates; when they migrate they carry them across the sea
to lands where they are not. Into the heart of East London there poured
from Russia, from Poland, from Germany, from Holland, streams of Jewish
exiles, refugees, settlers, few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb,
but all rich in their cheerfulness, their industry, and their
cleverness. The majority bore with them nothing but their phylacteries
and praying shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and
Christianity. For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution. He
knows that he is in _Goluth_, in exile, and that the days of the Messiah
are not yet, and he looks upon the persecutor merely as the stupid
instrument of an all-wise Providence. So that these poor Jews were rich
in all the virtues, devout yet tolerant, and strong in their reliance on
Faith, Hope, and more especially Charity.

In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were brethren.
Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim--descendants of the Spanish
crypto-Jews who had reached England _via_ Holland--had modified its
boycott of the poor Ashkenazic immigrants, now they were become an
overwhelming majority. There was a superior stratum of Anglo-German Jews
who had had time to get on, but all the Ashkenazic tribes lived very
much like a happy family, the poor not stand-offish towards the rich,
but anxious to afford them opportunities for well-doing. The _Schnorrer_
felt no false shame in his be