uarrel. The prayers are
chiefly of a laudatory, a confiding, a grateful, reverent character, and
in a style, as regards composition, indicative of a foreign origin.
Indeed, all the time the service is performing--the principal one is on
the Saturday morning, and very long--you feel as if you were a stranger,
as if you had no business there; that to the hook-nosed, black-haired,
dark-eyed men around, you are a poor pale-faced, flat-nosed Saxon, to be
preyed on and victimized to any extent. Here and there you see a
foreigner in the picturesque garb of the East, looking sad and solitary
as if he really remembered Zion, as if he had walked along the shores of
Galilee, rested beneath the shade of the cedars of Lebanon, or had drank
of

"Siloa's brook,
That flowed fast by the oracle of God."

Occasionally a Jew will rush in, seize a prayer-book, and, shutting his
eyes, gabble on at a prodigious rate as if he had started late and had to
make up for lost time, and his repeated bowing to all points of the
compass is, to the spectator, of a very perplexing character. In this
quarter the Jews, as regards appearance, are not very wealthy, nor have
many of them very clean hands, nor, except on certain occasions, are the
synagogues very well filled. Here you fail to recognise the swell Jews
of Margate and Ramsgate, of Brighton and the Boulevards, the fact being
that the rich Jews, like the rich Christians, have gone further west; yet
the Montefiores belong to Bevis Marks, and the Rothschilds to the great
congregation in Duke's Place. Such are the London synagogues, including,
in addition to those we have already referred to, those in Fenchurch
Street, St. Alban's Place, Maiden Lane, Cutler Street, Islington,
Portland Street, Bayswater, and others. But the reader will ask, What of
the ladies?--most of our churches and chapels would look intolerably
destitute without them. The answer is, all the duties of their worship
depend entirely on the males. The Jewesses are allowed to sit in a
gallery. At Bevis Marks you see they are there, that is all. Whether
they are white or black, whether they listen or not, it is impossible to
tell, as they are concealed behind a lattice-work almost as impervious to
male eyes as those behind which, on the night of a debate, our House of
Commons hides our British fair. In other synagogues their gallery is
open, and they can see and be seen.

Even these ancient people are movi