st parents, of a family settled in
England for three generations, and went to Harrow and Oxford in due
course. That is all. I saw a little of the Ghetto, though, when I was a
boy. I had some correspondence on Hebrew Literature with a great Jewish
scholar, Gabriel Hamburg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I
was up from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at the
foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by Gideon, the
member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by the enthusiasm; it was
there I made the acquaintance of Strelitski. He spoke as if inspired. I
also met a poverty-stricken poet, Melchitsedek Pinchas, who afterwards
sent me his work, _Metatoron's Flames_, to Harrow. A real neglected
genius. Now there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and
poetry. After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with the
Ghetto, and have been there several times lately."

"But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine?"

"I do. Why should we not have our own country?"

"It would be too chaotic! Fancy all the Ghettos of the world
amalgamating. Everybody would want to be ambassador at Paris, as the old
joke says."

"It would be a problem for the statesmen among us. Dissenters,
Churchmen, Atheists, Slum Savages, Clodhoppers, Philosophers,
Aristocrats--make up Protestant England. It is the popular ignorance of
the fact that Jews are as diverse as Protestants that makes such novels
as we were discussing at dinner harmful."

"But is the author to blame for that? He does not claim to present the
whole truth but a facet. English society lionized Thackeray for his
pictures of it. Good heavens! Do Jews suppose they alone are free from
the snobbery, hypocrisy and vulgarity that have shadowed every society
that has ever existed?"

"In no work of art can the spectator be left out of account," he urged.
"In a world full of smouldering prejudices a scrap of paper may start
the bonfire. English society can afford to laugh where Jewish society
must weep. That is why our papers are always so effusively grateful for
Christian compliments. You see it is quite true that the author paints
not the Jews but bad Jews, but, in the absence of paintings of good
Jews, bad Jews are taken as identical with Jews."

"Oh, then you agree with the others about the book?" she said in a
disappointed tone.

"I haven't read it; I am speaking generally. Have you?"

"Yes."

"And what did you t