than the board itself; a few hats; an enormous
number of cloth caps of all shapes and
sizes—made, so Wells tells me, from the skirts
or otherwise unworn parts, of old coats. Jewry
will stand any trial you like to make of her, in
the way of actual requirements, I'll warrant it.
Are you in search of mental pabulum? Here it
is! Trays full of literature of all kinds, gaudily
bound books of shilling lore, or tattered copies
of the Hebrew Law. Engravings, coloured or
plain? Here shall you see how Herr Jakobs in
the Hoher Strasse, Berlin, has copied, or thinks
he has copied, some old English prints of fox-
hunting scenes; and here shall you see the
marvellous horses, and the more marvellous riders,
and the more marvellous leaps which the German
artist has probably evolved from the depths of his
internal consciousness, as his countryman did the
camel; here shall you see Abraham offering up
Isaac: the former in all the glory of the grand
old Jewish type, dignified and bearded, than
which, when good, there is scarcely anything
better; but Isaac a little too nosey, and rather
too oily, and considerably too lip-py, and, on the
whole, too much like the young Jew-boy who
just now tried to steal a bit of liver out of that
frying-pan in which a quantity of it is hissing,
and who so nearly received in his eye the point
of the steel fork which the Jewish maiden
watching over it earnestly prodded at that feature.
For, eating is by no means neglected in
Jewry; in the glassless windows of many of the
houses, the frying-pans are hard at work, presided
over by Jewry's daughters, bright-eyed,
dark-skinned, nimble-fingered, shrill-tongued.
Pleasant to look upon are Jewry's daughters,
despite a certain oiliness, which is probably
attributable to contact with the contents of the
frying-pan; it is in the contemplation of Jewry's
mammas that you begin to doubt the beauty of
the race. For, when you behold Jewry's mammas
in the flesh, you generally behold them in rather
too much of it, and they have an objection to
buttons and hooks-and-eyes, and other ligaments;
a hatred of corsets and chemisettes, and
other womanly neatnesses; a tendency to bulge,
and an aversion to soap and water—all of which
peculiarities detract from their charms in the
impartial eye (meaning mine).

Liver and fried fish are the principal, but by
no means the only, edible articles for sale;
through the crowd come wending men with
glass dishes on their heads, containing long
gelatinous-looking fruits. "Pickled cucumbers,"
says Wells, as they pass; " pickled cucumbers,
never ate by anybody but Jews, and never seen
elsewhere; they're said to be reg'lar good eating,
but I never heard tell of a Christian who tried
one. But the Jews—Lor' bless you!—they
hold 'em in their fists, and bite away at 'em like
boys do at lollipops!" Wells also tells me
that pickles of every kind are in high favour
in Jewry, that the denizens thereof will eat
pickles at any time, no matter whether onions,
cauliflower, cabbage, or what not, and will drink
the pickle-liquor "as you would a glass of
sherry." I think I can understand this. I
can imagine that a pickle must be, in some
conditions, a fine setter-up! Say, at a bargain,
for instance! How, just before asking your
price, a fine stinging acrid pickle, must sharpen
your faculties, and clear your brain, and set
your nerves, and string your persuasive powers!
How, if you be purchaser, it must lower your
tone and your aspects of human life, and degrade
the article in your views, and render you generally
unpleasant and morose and disinclined to
deal, and so, eventually, successful! No wonder
pickles are at a premium in Jewry!

All this time we are slowly struggling through
the crowd, which, never ceasing for an instant,
surges round us, reminding one more of an
illumination-night mob in its component parts than
anything else. And it is curious to see how the
itinerant vendors of goods, be they of what sort
they may—whether sham jewellery, cheap music,
pipes and cigars, bullfinches, boxes of dominoes,
bird-whistles, or conjuring tricks—are whirled
about in the great vortex of humanity; now, in
the midst of their " patter," caught upon a
surging wave and carried away long past those
whom they were but this moment in the act of
addressing. So, we pass through Cutler-street
and Harrow-alley, borne along with scarcely any
motion of our own, the crowd behind us pushing,
the crowd before us shoving; and we, by dint
of broad shoulders and tolerable height, making
our way with occasional drifting into out-of-the-
way courses, but always looked after by Inspector
Wells. I don't suppose there is the
smallest danger of our coming to grief, for,
indeed, I never saw a better-behaved mob;
thieves there are in scores, no doubt, from
burly roughs with sunken eyes and massive jaws,
sulkily elbowing their way through the mass, to
"gonophs" and pickpockets of fourteen or fifteen,
with their collarless tightly-tied neck-handkerchiefs,
their greasy caps, and " aggrawator"
curls—indeed, we have not been in the crowd
two minutes, before Oppenhardt has the back
pockets of his great-coat turned inside out, and
I have felt myself carefully " sounded" all over
by a pair of lightly-touching hands. But there
is no ribaldry, no blackguardism, no expression
of obnoxious opinion. One gentleman, indeed,
wants to know " who those collared blokes is,"
in delicate allusion to our clean shirts; but he is
speedily silenced; and one Jewish maiden, who,
with much affection, addresses us as "dears,"
and advises us to " take care of our pockets," is
sternly rebuked by an elderly matron, who says,
"Let 'em alone—if they comes here, they must
suffer." But, generally, Mob is thoroughly good
tempered. Mob like Oppenhardt very much,
and make numerous inquiries as to what he'll
take for his beard, where he lives when he is
at home, whether he ain't from furrin' parts,
brother to the Princess Hallexandry, a Rooshan,
&c. One young gentleman, with a potato-can,
points to his fruit, and says, invitingly, " 'Ave
a tightener, captin:" at which Oppenhardt is
pleased. Mob is more familiar with me, as being
humbler, and more akin to its own order; in one
tremendous struggle, a lad puts his arms round