ow
where we are safe, in this country; and your _Foreign Quarterly_ is
not one of the favoured publications which we are licensed to import."
What a pitiable state of existence is this,--what a perfect bondage of
_mind_, for which the utmost security to person and property can never
make amends.

CHAPTER XI.

THE JEWS' TOWN. VISITS TO VARIOUS POINTS WORTH NOTICING. STATE OF
PUBLIC FEELING.

I have devoted so much more of space than I had intended to the
university, and the associations connected with it, that I must be
content to describe in few words, such other objects as appeared to me
most deserving of notice in Prague. Prominent among these is the Juden
Stadt, or City of the Jews; of which I may state, at the outset, that,
of all the extraordinary scenes in which I have ever been an actor,
there are few which, more than my visit to the Jews' Quarter of Prague,
have left upon my mind so vivid and lasting an impression. Let the
reader imagine to himself, if he can, the effect of a sudden transition
from the pomp and splendour of a great capital into a suburb of mean
and narrow streets, choked up with the litter of old rags, broken
furniture, and cast-off clothes hung out for sale; where are aged women
asleep in their chairs,--young ones nursing infants, or, it may be,
perfecting their own unfinished toilets; men, squalid and filthy, with
long beards, flowing robes, and all the other appurtenances which
usually belong to their race; children in a state of nudity; turbaned
heads, features thoroughly Oriental; tarnished finery, books, music,
and musical instruments, scattered about; everything, in short, whether
animate or inanimate, as entirely in contrast with what you have just
left behind, as you might expect to find it, were you transported
suddenly into some region of the earth, of the very existence of which
you had previously been ignorant. I have passed through the classic
regions of St. Giles, the Seven Dials, and Rag Fair. I have gone, in my
youth, under the escort of a police officer, the round of all the most
degraded corners of London; yet have I never beheld a sight, which, in
all that is calculated to bewilder, if not to outrage, the senses,
could bear one moment's comparison with what the Juden Stadt brought
before me. I confess that the first feeling excited was a vague idea,
that to proceed further might compromise our personal safety. Yet I
defy any one who has penetrated but a few yards