Judah's lion:

Chapter I

‘ Oh, cousin Alick, how I do envy you !’ said Esther Cohen, with a sigh.

‘ I can believe it, my poor httle coz,’ replied the person addressed. ^ Compared with town itself, this to be sure, is a free place, where you may breathe and glance round you : but what a look-out one will have from the mast-head of a tall ship, over the rich blue waters of the Mediterranean, with its clusters of isles, all immortalized in song. And then for the sandy desert, the high mountain-top, the dark ravine, the deep defile, the broad majestic waters of the sevenmouthed river, and all the untold wonders of nature and art, that lie outspread beneath the ken of travellers so enterprising, so sagacious, so classically and scientifically accomplished as your redoubtable cousin Alick!’

But it was for none of these things that Esther Cohen sighed : her fancy had indeed pictured the judah’s lion.

track that she had just seen her uncle point out on a chart with the features referred to by Alick, and very attractive they would ha^^e been in her eyes had not all other considerations been lost in the para* mount one which evidently was omitted in her kinsman’s catalogue of anticipated delights. Syria — Palestine — Mount Zion — these were ever prominent to the view of that Hebrew maiden. Gladly would she have trod the whole route, a fettered and blindfolded captive, to have found herself at the end of it within sight of Jerusalem, with permission to weep over its departed glories. Her thought by day, her dream by night, was of the dispersion, the degradation of her people ; and while the occasional outbursts of higher patriotism which she could not control were good-humouredly smiled at, and herself regarded as a pretty enthusiast by the members of her uncle’s household, she was altogether isolated in the midst of them, by the consciousness that this, the deepest feeling of her heart, was totally unshared. Reading, meditation, and a strict attention to all the prescribed forms of her religion were therefore the elements on which her zeal was chiefly fed: and Esther Cohen, though amiable in a high degree, and universally beloved by all around her, would not have shrunk from, but rather have gloried in, the distinction of being a most rigid and bigoted Jewess.

Her uncle, the younger brother of her deceased father, was, on the contrary, a complete liberal in religion. He came of high lineage among the descendants of Abraham, and certainly prided himself in the unmixed character of his pedigree, which

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€wned no Gentile intermarriage throughout its long and wide ramifications ; but he was, to all intents and purposes, a man of the world, prosperous in a lucrative and honourable branch of traffic, devoted to the pursuit of such advantages as he deemed most desirable for his family, and above all things solicitous to see his people relieved from the pressure of civil disabilities, and exalted to a place in the legislature. Confident that this would soon be the result of the efforts in progress, he had brought up his son with a special view to rendering him eligible for such distinctions; and to this end he had liberalized to an extent by no means approved among his stricter brethren ; who considered that their young kinsman might occupy his expected station among Gentile senators and officials without being unmindful of his own peculiar privileges as a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

Nathan Alexander Cohen, however, gave himself very little concern with regard either to the prognostics of his father or the scruples of their friends. Full of animal life, buoyant in spirits, frank, sociable, and impetuous, he found himself possessed of all the advantages that this world can bestow upon its votaries, and sported like a young colt in the wide pleasant field assigned for his pasturage and play. Proud he was to excess ; but his pride was quite distinct from that of Esther or his father. Jealousy of his personal honour and privileges formed its chief point ; to which he added a nationality quite foreign to the general character of his people ; for he deemed it his cliief glory to be an Englishman. Vain were 1* a judah’s lion.

his cousin’s indignant remonstrances, and the occur sional reprimands of elder friends ; the boy had been brought up in a large school, where all religious differences were smoothed down after the most ap proved fashion of fnodern indifferentism ; and little as his father was suspected of any fanatical attachment to the Mosaic law, the son gave ^ promise of holding it yet more loosely. Extensively as virtual infidelity is eating into the core of professing Christianity among us, it pervades no less deeply the mass of the Jewish people at this day.

Among other things, the name of Nathan had been wholly dropped by the younger Cohen, and that of Alexander, the surname of a Hebrew connexion which had been given him, was shortened into Alick, and thus assisted to Gentilize him. But in one respect he was found inveterately Israelitish, for the contour of his face, its olive tint, brightened into richness by the glow of health and animation, the jet black of his sparkling eyes and hair, all proclaimed what his manners, his education, his habits declined to confirm, that Alick Cohen was decidedly a Jew.

Idle, volatile, and self-willed, he had loitered in his studies: and now, at eighteen, having just been emancipated from the hands of a private tutor, engaged to finish what the school had failed in, it rather puzzled his father what step to take next. A German university was decided on; but circumstances, wherein pleasure and profit were equally concerned, led Mr. Cohen to plan a tour in the East, where a wide field for commercial speculation had opened to him. Ahck found no difficulty in obtaining permission to

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accompany him; and this gave rise to the expression of envy from Esther, who regarded as most desirable that part of her cousin’s anticipated gratifications which he himself scarcely even numbered among them.

The evening before their departure Alick went to pass an hour with a neighbouring family, where he found two or three other guests assembled : his proposed route being alluded to, a young lady whose enthusiasm appeared greatly roused by the subject, asked him if he expected to visit Jerusalem and the surrounding spots ! and on his replying in the affirmative, entreated him to bring her some relic from those hallowed places; on which another remarked, ‘ You had better ask for a sprig from one of the ancient cedars of Lebanon ;’ And Alick, ever ready to oblige, promised to bring home a choice collection of those venerable trees. When he related this to Esther at home, to his surprise, she burst into tears, exclaiming, ‘ Do not, Alick, rob our glorious mountain of its few surviving honours, to indulge the childish fancy of a vain Gentile !’

^You are an odd girl, Esther; what can be the harm of taking a leaf or two out of a cluster of crazy old trees?’

‘ Well, I shall not dispute the matter with you. Nevertheless, Alick, I shall pray to the God of Abraham that before you reach that spot you may have learned to shrink from the sacrilege you now speak of so lightly.’

But there was another in that house besides Esther, supplicating the God of Abraham on the youth’s behalf, and with a better knowledge both of whom

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she addressed and of what she asked. This was an old Christian servant, truly a Christian, who for her fidelity had been long installed in a sort of demiofficial character, an office created for her in Mr. Cohen’s household, as overlooker of the linen department, and superintendent of all packing, unpacking, and similar operations, in which she conceived herself profoundly skilled. She was a simple creature, without a particle of this world’s learning or wisdom, held in some disdain by the modern domestics for the unsophisticated homeliness of her ways and apparel, but by her harmlessness, good humour and obliging disposition, overcoming all prejudice. She could not even read ; for having neglected to acquire the accomplishment in her youth, nothing could persuade Susan it was attainable in declining years, though Alick had frequently offered to stake his best play-things on his success in teaching, if Susan would become his pupil. ‘ No, no, master Alick,’ she would reply, ‘ I’m too old to learn ; and wffiat need of it while you are so good as to read me a scrap of news out of the paper, and Miss Esther a fine tale out of a story-book? It iU becomes the likes of me to set up for a scholar in my old age.’

Latterly, however, a great change had passed on Susan’s tastes and feelings. The gospel was introduced into the parish pulpit by a new minister ; she heard, believed, and in the midst of her simplicity and ignorance, became wise unto salvation. Newspapers and story-books lost their charm : she pref(6jrred to feast her mind on what she could remember

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of the last sabbath’s scripture and sermons ; but it was only within a week or two that her w'arrn interest had been excited on behalf of the family she loved so well and served so truly.

A sermon had been preached for the Jews’ Society, and Susan, with awe-struck wonder, heard for the first time of the privileges, the sins, the chastisements, the hopes of Israel. Her whole soul became wrapt up in the one anxious desire to see her master’s household converted to Christ ; and Alick, as he had ever been her chief favourite, now stood foremost in her hopes and prayers. The sudden tidings of his intended voyage, which to her simple apprehension was a stupendous undertaking, beset with perils innumerable, sent her in dismay to the minister, who calmed her fears and soothed her anxiety by putting up a very fervent supplication for the young Jew.

When Alick came to her for the double purpose of ascertaining the state of his packages, and bidding a kind farewell, he was touched by the trembling earnestness of her injunctions to avoid all danger, and to keep away from all bad companions. ‘ Oh, never fear, Suke,’ replied he, ‘ I know better than to risk my precious neck without cause ; and as for bad company, I shall not disgrace my family by mixing with people beneath me.’

Fain would she have pointed to a higher and purer motive, but she had never yet ventured upon any discourse of the kind with her master’s family ; and before she could muster resolution he was called away.

‘ Good bye, Susan ; take care of your old bones, that I may find them safe and snug in their comfortable jtjdah’s lion.

case when I return.’ He held out his hand ; the faithful creature clasped it between her’s, and her feelings broke forth in a scriptural phrase, quoted in the minister’s prayer for him, and which she had often since repeated in her own, The God of his father Abraham, the Angel that delivered Jacob from all evil, bless the lad !” Alick looked at her with some surprize ; but he only said, ‘ Thank ye, Susan j I hope he will,’ and bounded away.

The person who had called him was his cousin Esther. Discouraged in her exclusive feelings by those around her, and particularly shy of provoking Ahck’s bantering drollery, she had repressed many a rising exhortation where she deemed it greatly needed ; but now that he was on the very eve of departing on such a pilgrimage, she resolved to discharge her conscience, and to set before him his duty> Accordingly she began by inquiring if he could really proceed on a journey to Jerusalem with no greater emotion than if he were going to Paris or to Berlin ?

‘ Why, no ; I don’t say that, Esther. Without bringing up useless distinctions in the way you do, one must feel something in going for the first time to visit what is certainly the land of his fathers, though it is not his own,’

‘Not his own, Alick Cohen? Who shall dare to say of that land that it is not at this moment the property of every Hebrew on the face of the earth ?’

‘ A very unprofitable property, coz. For any good it yields me, or any business I have with it, I might

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just as well point to Sir John’s park yonder, anc call it mine.’

‘ If Coleby Park had belonged to your ancestors from time immemorial, and was entailed on you, the sole heir, and had been forcibly taken possession of by a gang of robbers, who held it by mere strength of arm, defying both law and justice, would you not still call it yours V

‘ Ay, and soon get it out of their rascally clutches, I’ll warrant you. But your simile does not hold good ; for the property you speak of, yonder in the East, has certainly been made over by the Great Proprietor above to other tenants.’

‘ Alas, alas 1’ said Esther, ‘ it is too true. Our sins have forfeited the possession, and we shall never, never regain it while remaining thus careless, impenitent, hardened under the Divine rebuke.’ Then suddenly fixing on him her eyes, which she had before shaded with her clasped hands, she sternly added, ‘ It is such as you who stand between the tribes and their inheritance ! The very temple of Mount Zion, in all the magnificence of its glory, would not outweigh with you the glitter and the pride of a little wealth, display, and power in the midst of an infidel nation.’

Alick was roused ; he darted back a look equally proud and angry as her own, but his eye presently fell beneath the lofty scorn of her’s ; and with a short laugh he carelessly remarked, ‘ One must not be too severe with a pretty girl when she gets into “ Ercles’ vein,” by way of variety ’

jtjdah’s lion.

‘ No, cousin Alick, I do not vary, and you know it My feeling, however suppressed out of deference to those above me, is always the same. A daughter of Jerusalem by right, I never will forego the lofty privileges of that character, though the loftiest of them now be that of weeping over the ruins of Jerusalem, the desolation, the degradation of her degenerate sons.* She turned away in tears : then again facing him said, with greater animation, ^ You will have a new character to sustain ; hitherto you have lived in a charmed circle, where a golden talisman secures you from all that you must shortly expect to encounter. Unless with the honourable name of Nathan you mean to drop and wholly to deny your blood and lineage, you will yet find yourself reviled, taunted, thrust out, trampled upon, in the character of a despised Jew.* Colouring with anger, the youth haughtily replied, * Jew or Gentile, no hving man shall dare to despise me.*

Esther shook her head compassionately, ‘ Ah, so . you think, hut time will undeceive you. Apostacy alone can save you from your share of the national curse — the scorn of the Gentile ; and I don’t think, Alick, I don’t think,* she deliberately repeated, ‘ that you are yet prepared to stamp that open brow with the foul brand of a cowardly apostate.*

The youth was excessively provoked ; but affecting a louder laugh than before, he apologised for not having time to answer her pleasantry, and left her with apparent good humour. Esther almost regretted hav ing pursued so rough a course, when a little manage

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t merit might have led to better results; but it wa past, and no opportunity presented itself of repairing the mischief A brief good-bye was all she could interchange with Alick, before he started with his father for the port whence they were to sail, in a ship of the line, for the Mediterranean.

CHAPTER IL

Adverse winds detained the ship for some diys m the Channel ; after which they coasted leisurely westward, the captain having to communicate with the Admiral at Cove. Every thing in the shape of delay was agreeable to Alick, who found in the sea an element so delightful, and in the sprightly young middies associates so congenial to him, than an order to circumnavigate the globe in that company would have been welcome. Mr. Cohen, who suffered greatly from sickness, had not even made his appearance at the captain’s table ; hut Alick, a general favourite, had already experienced the hospitality of all the messes ; among which he certainly preferred the gun-room, where, at a slip of table thirty feet long, assembled the gallant array of midshipmen, varying in years from fourteen to more than twice that age, a schoolmaster, two assistant surgeons, and very frequently a warrant-officer as guest. The early dinnerhour of noon allowed Alick to accept the almost daily invitations as to a lunch, though the abundance of choice viands served up usually tempted him to make it a full meal ;'and his keen perception of character ensured him endless amusement among such society.

Alick Cohen had never loved study, so far as books were concerned j but he was naturally of an inquiring

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IS turn, and impressed not only vividly but deeply Avith whatever was presented to him through the medium of common occurrence or conversation. Far from being deficient either in sense or talent, his mind had remained comparatively inert, more for lack of any suitable stimulant to force it into action than from indolence. At home he had known no wish that could not be gratified by touching a bell-rope ; and at school a well-filled purse wrought its wonted effects. The society wherein he had moved was of that polish which wears away, from the surface at least, all irregularities of character ; and thus he had been becalmed on the smooth waters of a rich citizen’s life, long enough to render the present contrast enchanting.

Some of his young friends in the gun-room were highly bred ; a title, more than one Honourable, and several of his own class, ranked among them; but though some affected the fine gentleman, and strove against the infection of their comrades’ blunt hilarity, they could not succeed in chilling the genial atmosphere around them; more particularly as such attempts were pointedly put down by the captain and first lieutenant, two disciplinarians of the old school, and still more effectually checked by an individual of subordinate rank ; but who, perhaps, possessed more real influence among the middies than any other man on board.

This was the gunner, a fine old seaman, who had risen by sterling merit to that important post, and whose thorough knowledge of his profession, peculiar aptitude for communicating it, and unbounded kindness in affording valuable information, had rendered

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him an oracle among the inexperienced officers. He was rough and unceremonious, hut never harsh or rude. His broad, honest face beamed with intelligence, benevolence, and manly decision, while his quick eye seemed formed at once to detect and to reprove anything reprehensible. Alick took great note of him, seldom losing a remark that he uttered; for in his heart he had already resolved by some means to enter the service ; and the information that any attentive listener might derive from Gordon’s general discourse on nautical subjects was likely to prove of material use. The grand feature, however, in the gunner’s character he did not comprehend, for Gordon was spiritually-minded; a true, firm, and consistent believer.

The senior midshipman, a disappointed and discon tented man, openly broached infidel principles, in which he was covertly supported by one of the assistant surgeons, who prudently refrained from committing himself directly on that point. The school-master, well read in Paley’s Evidences, and armed with such Christianity as man may learn from man, constantly met and repelled all serious assaults on revealed religion ; but allowed the sneer, the laugh, the banter, to pass unheeded. Gordon, whose constant care it was to uphold the relative authority of each officer in the ship, refrained from interposing when the schoolmaster came forward ; but many a rebuke did he administer on occasions when, hut for him, the ground would have been undefended. Sharpe, the infidel, was much disliked by his comrades, who relished seeing him wincing under Gordon’s lash ; and

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what between well-merited love, and salutary dread, of the old gunner, the latter enjoyed an exemption from those petty persecutions which too often are the lot of a Christian in his situation.

Alick’s Hebrew origin had not been surmised. In the little billets occasionally handed to him he was usually addressed as ‘ Coane,’ and he himself bestowed no thought on the matter. It happened as they were beating off the Cove of Cork that he strolled into the gun-room with one of his young friends, just as the debate was running high between Mr. Sharpe and the schoolmaster. The former, it seemed, had denounced the whole Bible as a tissue of falsehood and folly ; while the latter was, with more earnestness than usual, upholding its divine authority. A group of middies surrounded the combatants, of whom one was drawing a caricature sketch, while Gordon was delighting a mere child, just entered as a midshipman, by superintending the carving of a ship’s hull with his penknife. Alick took his station in the midst of the listeners.

^ All that you have said is vastly fine, Mr. Cowper,’ said Sharpe, ^ but it amounts to just this ; certain predictions appear in the Old Testament, and their fulfilment is recorded in the New ; so you make the two parcels of the Bible reciprocally prove each other ; whereas I take leave to regard them both as parts of one great forgery, framed so to support one another’s pretences.’

‘ Setting the New Testament aside altogether,’ replied the other, ^ I refer you to the fulfilment of prophecy in the nations around us.

2* i8

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* Of which a great deal took place before the pro' phecies were written/ said Sharpe contemptuously, ^ and the rest would have come to pass in the natural course of events, even had they not been so shrewdly guessed at, and, as you called it, foretold.’

‘ Impossible !’ said Cowper, ^ no human sagacity could have foreseen the occurrences that have fallen out, exactly as foreshewn in the pages of inspiration. But leaving all others, I will take up one point alone j what think you, sir, of that universal problem, the outcast, miserable, degraded Jews?’

‘ Why, I think them a pack of very great vagabonds,’ answered Mr. Sharpe.

‘ Undoubtedly they are ; the very offscourings of the world, a by-word, a hissing, a scorn, and a reproach ; but was not this foretold ?’

‘ Yes, and in the same way I could sit down and write a prophecy that Poland should be dismembered by the Russians.’

‘ Well, sir, but supposing the Bible to be ever so modern a book as you fancy it, only a few centuries old, still I maintain that the lapse of those few centuries was sufficient, nay certain, in the common course of events, to have obliterated all natural trace of such an outcast race, amalgamating them with the various people of the earth, or exterminating them altogether by the many and severe persecutions that they have undergone. Instead of which, you find no country under heaven without the Jew, bearing the brand of his crime, the curse of God, and the universal contempt of his fellow-creatures.’

* Look at Sharpe, how he is posed and caught

JUDAll’s LICN. 19

whispered a middy to another who was leaning on Alick’s shoulder.

‘ Ay/ responded the other, ‘ fairly caught in the bag of an old-clothes’ -man, and Jewed out of his prime argument.’ This excited a laugh among those who heard it, and a variety of witticisms were bandied about, all deriving their point from some malicious or contemptuous allusion to the Jew.

Sharpe replied, but Alick heeded not his words : a sensation of wrath and shame, such as he had never before experienced, thrilled through him. The latter, however, predominated for the moment ; he felt abashed, crushed beneath a weight of odium the more cruelly bitter because it was wholly free from any personal allusion. All the epithets of scorn bestowed on his people, and which seemed to be generally admitted by those who heard them as words of course, belonging to himself as one of that despised nation ; and he felt that, as a Jew, he must rank in the estimations of companions who now considered him fully their equal, as inferior to the least — ay, probably, to the sailors before the mast. The feeling that overwhelmed the young Israehte was that “ sorrow of heart” peculiar to those on whom it falls as a stroke from above. He smothered it in his own bosom, and gladly followed one of the young men who, tired of listening to a subject that did not interest him, went on deck.

When Alick withdrew to his berth for the night, and found himself alone, he strove to avoid all unpleasant recollections ; or rather to banish their recurrence after being pretty well stifled in the mirth of an nJDAH S LION.

evening party. Despite all efforts, his thoughts fell into that train, and a new sentiment sprang up in Ins mind, from which it had hitherto heen wholly free — dislike to Christians. ‘ It was to prove the truth of his own religion that he dared to speak so insultingly of us,’ thought Alick, as he recalled the purport of Mr. Cowper’s argument ; ^ and though those officers care little enough about it in general things, yet being Christians, they all joined in joking and jeering at the Jews. Oh, how mad Esther would have been!’ and he could not forbear smiling, as the remembrance of their last discussion mingled with the picture that his fancy drew of her presence in the gun-room. Sleep soon terminated his cogitations, and at early morning the hustle of casting anchor in the fine harbour of Cork obliterated every unpleasant recollection.

But Alick was not to remain long in this untroubled •tate : the captain had manned his gig, and gone off to the flag-ship, and the usual laxity of discipline connived at in port gave admission to many strangers. One of the middies, a mischievous lad of sixteen, who had been peering into the numerous boats that surrounded the vessel, and descried in one of them an object likely to afford him some sport, approached the schoolmaster, then leaning on a gun-carriage, explaining some local phenomena to a party of listeners, among whom was Alick, and said, ^ Here, Sir, I have brought you a choice addition to your stock of evidences : you had better keep him to produce on your next discussion with Sharpe :’ and he pushed forward a most squalid little object, of unquestionably Jewish aspect, with a shaggy grey jtjdah’s licn.

beard, ragged clotliing, and a net of oranges in each hand. A shout of laughter welcomed the visitor, who seemed perfectly at his ease ; and one said ‘ Well, my little Moshesh, vat ish your bishnesh here V

Sharpe, just then passing, paused, joined in the laugh, and asked with a sneer, ‘ Which of your prophets prophesied of him, Mr. Cowper?’

The Jew’s brow contracted : he evidently felt the insult, but instead of noticing it, held up his nets, proclaiming the cheapness of his fruits.

‘ Confess you stole them, Moshesh,’ said one.

^ I did not, upon my conscience. Sir, answered the man.

‘ Conscience ! a Jew’s conscience ! what a notable thing to swear by,’ shouted another. Alick’s blood was beginning to boil: he looked round, as if to single out some object for a burst of resentment, when the gunner approaching, said, ^ By your leave, gentlemen, as nobody seems disposed to buy, I will stow away the Jew’s cargo. Well, my friend, what are your terms V

The nets were presently emptied, and Gordon resumed, ^ From what part of the world do you come V

^ From Plymouth, Sir: very few of our people visit Ireland, and I am here hut for a short time.’

^ I wonder at that : it is well known Ireland is the only country that never persecuted your race.’

^ They had not the opportunity,’ said the Jew with a half grin, ‘ for we have not dwelt among them.’

^ Aye, hut what kept you away ? The poverty of the country you will say perhaps.’ The Jew nodded, judah’s lion.

‘ Then poverty has been a great blessing there,’ continued Gordon, pointing to the land, ^ since it was the means of preserving at least one nation from the deep curse of afflicting God’s ancient people.’

He spoke the word curse with such deliberate emphasis, and accompanied it with so keen a glance round him, that no one could avoid noticing it.

^ Nay,’ said the schoolmaster, H am no apologist for persecution ; far from it ; it is the feature of a barbarous age, and wholly unsuited to these enlightened times. Still, as the Jews are certainly accursed by the word of the Almighty, I don’t see any particular sin in giving them their share in the troubles of a troublous age.’