Loe raamatut: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 347, December 20, 1828», lehekülg 4

THE JEWS

Their present actual numbers may, perhaps, not exceed six millions—numbers, however, probably greater than those over which Solomon reigned; and of these six millions there may be resident in the contiguous countries of Moravia, Ancient Poland, the Crimea, Moldavia, and Wallachia, above three millions. Except within the countries which formed Poland before its partitions, their population contained in any one European kingdom, cannot, therefore, be great. Yet so essentially are they one people, we might almost say one family; and so disposable is their wealth, as mainly vested in money transactions, that they must be considered as an aggregate, and not in their individual portions.

The Jews in France are perhaps from thirty to forty thousand; they abound chiefly at Metz, along the Rhine, and at Marseilles and Bordeaux. In Bonaparte's time they were imagined to amount to at least twice that number.—They are relieved from civil restraints and disabilities in France, and in the Netherlands also. The Jews in Holland, of both German and Portuguese origin, are numerous; the latter are said to have taken refuge there when the United Provinces asserted their independence of Spain; they have a splendid synagogue at Amsterdam. Infidelity is supposed to have made more progress amongst them than amongst the German Jews in Holland. The Italian Jews are chiefly at Leghorn and Genoa; and there are four thousand of them at Rome. In speaking of the religion of the Jews, it is not necessary to particularize those who assumed the mask of Christianity under terror of the Inquisition, although much has been said of their wealth and numbers, and of the high offices they have filled in Spain, and especially in Portugal. But it is curious to see, in a very distant quarter, a like simulation produced amongst them by like causes. There are at Salonica thirty synagogues, and about twenty-five thousand professed Jews; and a body of Israelites have been lately discovered there, who, really adhering to the faith of their fathers, have externally embraced Mahomedanism.

The Barbary Jews are a very fine people; but the handsomest Jews are said to be those of Mesopotamia. That province may also boast of an Arab chief who bears the name of the Patriarch Job, is rich in sheep, and camels, and oxen, and asses, abounds in hospitality, and believes that he descends from him; he is also famed for his justice. The Jews at Constantinople, forty thousand in number, and in the parts of European Turkey on and near the Mediterranean, speak Spanish, and appear to descend from Israelites driven from Spain by persecution. The Bible Society are now printing at Corfu the New Testament, in Jewish-Spanish, for their benefit.

In truth, little appears to be known of the state of the Jews during some hundreds of years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The first body of learned Jews which drew attention after that disastrous event was that settled in Spain; and from it all Jewish learning descends. As in accomplishment of the prophecy, the Jew is found over the whole surface of the globe; he has been long established in China, which abhors the foreigner; and in Abyssinia, which it is almost as difficult to reach as to quit. The early Judaism of that country, and in later days the history of the powerful colony of Jews established in its heart, which at one time actually reigned over the kingdom, are matters so curious, that we regret that we can do no more than advert to them; we must say the same as to the evidence existing of Jewish rites having extended themselves very far southward along the eastern coast of Africa; the numerous Jews of Barbary; and the black and white Jews, who have been established for ages, more or less remote, on the Malabar coast. It may be here observed, that all the Israelites hitherto discovered appear to be descendants of those who held the kingdom of Judah.

The Jews in Great Britain and Ireland are not supposed to be more than from ten to twelve thousand, very many of whom are foreigners, and migratory.—Quarterly Rev.

EGYPTIAN RATIONS

The rations of the Egyptian soldiers were, according to Herodotus, five pounds of baked bread, two pounds of beef, and half a pint of wine daily.

In the barbarous ages it was usual for persons who could not write, to make the sign of the cross in confirmation of a written paper. Several charters still remain in which kings and persons of great eminence affix "signum crucis pro ignoratione literarum," the sign of the cross, because of their ignorance of letters. From this is derived the phrase of signing instead of subscribing a paper.

COLUMN IN BLENHEIM PARK

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

You have lately directed the attention of the readers of the MIRROR to the park of Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, one of the most beautiful England can boast of, and likewise, according to Camden, the first park that was made in this country. I can bear witness to the correctness of your delineation and description of Rosamond's Well, which you gave in a recent number; but there is no trace whatever of the bower or labyrinth, the site of which is only pointed out by tradition. The park of Blenheim, besides the interest which attaches to it from the circumstance of its having been the residence of the early kings of England, and the scene of "Rosamond's" life, has in more modern times acquired additional interest from having been bestowed by the country upon the Duke of Marlborough, in testimony of the gratitude of the nation for the brilliant services he had rendered his country, particularly at the battle of Blenheim.

It was a reward at once worthy of the English nation and of the illustrious hero on whom it was bestowed; and as it is at least pleasing, and perhaps useful, to recall to the mind the epochs of England's greatness amongst nations, I have sent a sketch of one of the most prominent objects in the park of Blenheim, which our forefathers deemed (in the language of the inscription) would "stand as long as the British name and language last, illustrious monuments of Marlborough's glory and of Britain's gratitude." This is an elegant column, 130 feet in height, and surmounted by a statue of the warrior in an antique habit. On three sides of the building there are nearly complete copies of the several Acts of Parliament by which the park and manor of Woodstock were granted to the Duke of Marlborough and his heirs; and on the fourth side is a very long inscription, said to have been penned by Lord Bolingbroke, which concludes thus:—

 
These are the actions of the Duke of Marlborough,
Performed in the compass of a few years,
Sufficient to adorn the annals of ages.
The admiration of other nations
Will be conveyed to the latest posterity,
In the histories even of the enemies of Britain.
The sense which the British nation had
Of his transcendant merit
Was expressed
In the most solemn, most effectual, most durable manner.
The Acts of Parliament inscribed on the pillar
Shall stand as long as the British name and language last,
Illustrious monuments
Of Marlborough's glory and
Of Britain's gratitude.
 

G.W.

THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ

The French Thief-taker

This is as full-charged a portrait of human depravity as the gloomiest misanthrope could wish for. But it has much wider claims on public attention than the gratification of the misanthropic few who mope in corners or stalk up and down leafless and almost solitary walks during this hanging and drowning season. Nevertheless, all men are more or less misanthropes, or they affect to be so; for only skim off the bile of a true critic, or the minds of the hundred thousand who read newspapers, and look first for the bankrupts and deaths. Sugar and wormwood and wormwood and sugar are the standing dishes, but as we read the other day, "there is a certain hankering for the gloomy side of nature, whence the trials and convictions of vice become so much more attractive than the brightest successes of virtue." People with macadamized minds, and their histories (scarce as the originals are) are mere nonentities, and food for the trunk-maker; whereas a book of hair-breadth escapes, thrilling with horror and romantic narrative will tempt people to sit up reading in their beds, till like Rousseau, they are reminded of morning by the stone-chatters at their window. To the last class belong the Memoirs of Vidocq, an analysis of which would be "utterly impossible, so powerful are the descriptions, and so continuous the thread of their history." The original work was published a short time since in Paris, and republished here; but, we believe the present is the first translation that has appeared in England. The newspapers have, from time to time, translated a few extracts, when their Old Bailey news was at a stand, so that the name of Vidocq must be somewhat familiar to many of our readers.¹¹

Eugene Francois Vidocq is a native of Arras, where his father was a baker; and from early associations he fell into courses of excess which led to the necessity of his flying from the parental roof. After various, rapid, and unexampled events in the romance of real life, in which he was everything by turns and nothing long, he was liberated from prison, and became the principal and most active agent of police. He was made Chief of the Police de Surete under Messrs. Delavau and Franchet, and continued in that capacity from the year 1810 till 1827, during which period he extirpated the most formidable of those ruffians and villains to whom the excesses of the revolution and subsequent events had given full scope for the perpetration of the most daring robberies and inquitous excesses. Removed from employment, in which he had accumulated a handsome independence, he could not determine on leading a life of ease, for which his career of perpetual vigilance and adventure had unfitted him, and he built a paper manufactory at St. Mandeé, about two leagues from Paris, where he employs from forty to fifty persons, principally, it is asserted, liberated convicts, who having passed through the term of their sentence, are cast upon society without home, shelter, or character, and would be compelled to resort to dishonest practices did not this asylum offer them its protection and afford them opportunity of earning an honest living by industrious labour. One additional point of interest in the present volume is, that the author is still living.

[We cannot follow Vidocq through his career of crime, neither would it be altogether profitable to our readers; but the links may be recapitulated in a few words. He must have been born a thief, and perhaps stole the spoon with which he was fed; but the penchant runs in the family, for Vidocq and his brother rob the same till of a fencing-room, but his brother is first detected, and sent off "in a hurry," to a baker at Lille. Of course Vidocq soon gets partners in sin, and on the same day that he has been detected by the living evidence of two fowls which he had stolen, he sweeps from the dinner table ten forks and as many spoons, pawns them for 150 francs, spends the money in a few hours, and is imprisoned four days. He is then released; one of his pals gives a false alarm to Vidocq's mother, and during her temporary absence, Vidocq enters his home with a false key, steals 2,000 francs from a strong chest, with which he escapes to Ostend, (intending to embark for America,) where he is decoyed by a soi-disant ship-broker, and loses all his ill-gotten wealth. He then resolves to betroth the sea, though not after the Venetian fashion, by giving her a dowry; the "sound of a trumpet" disturbs his attention, as it would of any other hero. But this proves to be the note of Paillasse, a merry-andrew. The "director," as the opera bills would say, was Cotte-Comus, belonging to a troop of rope-dancers.

He next joins a player of Punch, to whose wife he enacts Romeo with better grace, and during one of the representations, the married people break each others heads, and Vidocq runs off during the affray. He then becomes assistant to a quack doctor, and the favoured swain of an actress; gets into the Bourbon regiment, where he is nicknamed Reckless, and kills two men, and fights fifteen duels in six months. His other exploits are as a corporal of grenadiers, of course, a deserter, and a prisoner of the revolution. He then marries, but does not reform. Of course a wife is but a temporary incumbrance to a man of Vidocq's dexterity. In chapter iii, we find him at Brussels, where he joins a set of nefarious gamblers at the Cafes, and has a most romantic adventure with a woman named Rosine. But we can follow him no further, except to add that his other comrades in Vol. I, are gipsies, smugglers, players, galley-slaves, drovers, Dutch sailors, and highwaymen.

We must, therefore, confine ourselves to a few detached extracts from the most interesting portion of the volume. At Lille, Vidocq meets with a chere amie, Francine; he suspects her fidelity, thrashes his rival, gets imprisoned, and is betrayed as an accomplice in a forgery. His "reflections" during his imprisonment in St. Peter's Tower, bring on a severe illness.]

I was scarcely convalescent, when, unable to support the state of incertitude in which I found my affairs, I resolved on escaping, and to escape by the door, although that may appear a difficult step. Some particular observations made me choose this method in preference to any other. The wicket-keeper at St. Peter's Tower was a galley-slave from the Bagne (place of confinement) at Brest, sentenced for life. In a word, I relied on passing by him under the disguise of a superior officer, charged with visiting St. Peter's Tower, which was used as a military prison, twice a week.