would require an inundation or a fire, or a
combination of the two.

Most people have heard of the extreme
fecundity of the Italian race.  A woman is
seldom met with who has not at least one
baby on her arm; but in the Ghetto, one might
fancy the children were born in clusters, and
each family to form a tribe by itself.  The
number is not known, but the elders of The
People estimate that there are four thousand
five hundred Hebrews in this valley of dirt.
They live in the street, standing, sitting, or
lying down in their rags, and great caution is
necessary to avoid committing infanticide at
every step.  The type of these people is ugly,
their complexion livid, and the expression of
the countenance degraded by misery;
nevertheless they are intelligent, adapted for
business, live on very little, are resigned and
irreproachable in their morals.

The existence of a colony of Jews at a few
paces from the apostolic seat being a singular
anomaly, it would be more singular still if it
prospered.  The Ghetto is poor, and for the
following reasons: A Jew can neither be a
proprietor, a farmer, or a manufacturer in
Rome.  He may sell new or old goods; he may
repair the old and sell it for new, if he can; but
he would violate the law if he manufactured
a chain, a waistcoat, or a pair of shoes.
Strictly confined to buying and selling, a few
among them amass property; but these, in such
cases, emigrate to a country where the laws
are milder and the people do not regard them
with the same contempt.  They generally go
to Leghorn; and thus, in the proportion that
individuals are enriched, the Ghetto is
impoverished.

It is not that the government is cruel or
even severe.  The severity is in the ancient
laws, which the progress of manners, and
the kindness of the popes, have gradually
softened.  The blood of the Hebrews did not
flow in Rome during the middle ages, while it
inundated Spain and the French provinces.
The Papacy guarded the Jews as a fragment
of a cursed people, who were bound to drag
out a miserable existence until the consummation
of the appointed time.  It was content
to keep them at a distance, to humiliate and to
plunder them.  They were at first compelled
to reside in the valley of Egeria, more than
two miles from the gate of Saint Lawrence.
About the fourteenth century this rigour
waa relaxed, and they were permitted to
reside in the Transtevera.  Finally, between
fifteen hundred and fifty-five and fifteen
hundred and fifty-nine Paul the Fourth
established them in the Ghetto.  The condition of
the Jews was so pitiable as to excite the
compassion of Urban the Eighth, who thought
he was doing an act of justice and foresight
in fixing, once for all, the amount of rent to be
levied on each house.  Such and such houses
were to pay ten and fifteen crowns a-year
respectively; the landlord being bound, on the
receipt of ten crowns from the tenant, to make
any repairs which the house might require.
Urban has been dead two hundred and
thirty-four years: yet the leases having been
made perpetual in accordance with his order,
and therefore transmissible to the latest
posterity, the yearly rent remains the same; so
that instead of the landlord deriving a
maintenance from his houses, it is the tenant who
has that advantage.  For instance, there is a
house belonging to a convent of Ursulines,
who receive thirty crowns a-year, while the
Hebrew tenant underlets it for four
hundred and fifty crowns; and in addition
he insists on the convent keeping it in
repair.  This, owing to the age of the
house, does not cost the convent less than
one hundred crowns a-year.  Formerly the
Ghetto possessed gates, which were
regularly closed at half-past ten at night in summer
and half-past nine in winter; but these were
demolished in eighteen hundred and forty-
seven, and there is no longer any visible
barrier between the Christians and Jews,
and the latter are authorised by the law to
live in any parts of the town they please.
But this law is a dead letter; for, if a Jew
wants a house in a better part of the city, he
is always refused.  Hence they complain
that the government takes from them secretly
that which it has accorded to them publicly;
and some of them even desire the restoration
of the gates, as they say they would, at all
events, insure protection at night.  The
wiser men in Israel, however, take things
quietly.  They thrive on the lowness of the
rents, the moderation of the excise duties,
and the benefits of a high foreign protector,
who introduces some secret article in their
favour in all his financial treaties.  It is
likewise only since the accession of Pius the
Ninth to the Pontificate that Israel has
ceased to bear the expenses of the Carnival.
In the middle ages, the municipality regaled
the populace with a Jews' race.  Benoit the
Fourteenth substituted horses for Jews;
but, at the expense of the latter; who were
ordered to pay eight hundred crowns yearly
for the sport.  Every year the chiefs of The
People carried the sum, with great ceremony,
to the senator, who, however, did not waste
any ceremony upon them the form of their
reception being something like this:

Senator: "Who are you?"

"Hebrews of Rome."

Senator: "I don't know you—begone!"

Even ten years since the municipal magistrate
added to this affable address a gesture
with the foot suggestive of an insult to which
no one is insensible.  The embassy next
proceeded to another official, who made the same
demand:

"Who are you?"

"Hebrews of Rome."

"What do you desire?"

"We humbly implore of your lordship the
favour of residing here another year."

The permission was granted, and the