第24章

but I am ready to assert that there are no people in the world better qualified, upon the whole, to be intrusted with the education of youth.Their moral system and discipline are truly admirable.Their pupils, in after life, are seldom vicious and licentious characters, and are in general men of learning, science, and possessed of every elegant accomplishment.I execrate the conduct of the liberals of Madrid in murdering last year the helpless fathers, by whose care and instruction two of the finest minds of Spain have been evolved - the two ornaments of the liberal cause and modern literature of Spain, for such are Toreno and Martinez de la Rosa....

Gathered in small clusters about the pillars at the lower extremities of the gold and silver streets in Lisbon, may be observed, about noon in every day, certain strange looking men, whose appearance is neither Portuguese nor European.Their dress generally consists of a red cap, with a blue silken tassel at the top of it, a blue tunic girded at the waist with a red sash, and wide linen pantaloons or trousers.He who passes by these groups generally hears them conversing in broken Spanish or Portuguese, and occasionally in a harsh guttural language, which the oriental traveller knows to be the Arabic, or a dialect thereof.These people are the Jews of Lisbon.Into the midst of one of these groups I one day introduced myself, and pronounced a beraka, or blessing.Ihave lived in different parts of the world, much amongst the Hebrew race, and am well acquainted with their ways and phraseology.I was rather anxious to become acquainted with the state of the Portuguese Jews, and I had now an opportunity.

"The man is a powerful rabbi," said a voice in Arabic; "it behoves us to treat him kindly." They welcomed me.I favoured their mistake, and in a few days I knew all that related to them and their traffic in Lisbon.

I found them a vile, infamous rabble, about two hundred in number.With a few exceptions, they consist of escapados from the Barbary shore, from Tetuan, from Tangier, but principally from Mogadore; fellows who have fled to a foreign land from the punishment due to their misdeeds.Their manner of life in Lisbon is worthy of such a goodly assemblage of AMISREUNIS.The generality of them pretend to work in gold and silver, and keep small peddling shops; they, however, principally depend for their livelihood on an extensive traffic in stolen goods which they carry on.It is said that there is honour amongst thieves, but this is certainly not the case with the Jews of Lisbon, for they are so greedy and avaricious, that they are constantly quarrelling about their ill-gotten gain, the result being that they frequently ruin each other.Their mutual jealousy is truly extraordinary.If one, by cheating and roguery, gains a cruzado in the presence of another, the latter instantly says I cry halves, and if the first refuse he is instantly threatened with an information.The manner in which they cheat each other has, with all its infamy, occasionally something extremely droll and ludicrous.I was one day in the shop of a Swiri, or Jew of Mogadore, when a Jew from Gibraltar entered, with a Portuguese female, who held in her hand a mantle, richly embroidered with gold.