horizon.  And they who have won their way beyond its boundaries must still play their parts in tragedies and comedies—­tragedies of spiritual struggle, comedies of material ambition—­which are the aftermath of its centuries of dominance, the sequel of that long cruel night in Jewry which coincides with the Christian Era.  If they are not the Children, they are at least the Grandchildren of the Ghetto.

The particular Ghetto that is the dark background upon which our pictures will be cast, is of voluntary formation.

People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges.  The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being.  But a minority will pass, by units, into the larger, freer, stranger life amid the execrations of an ever-dwindling majority.  For better or for worse, or for both, the Ghetto will be gradually abandoned, till at last it becomes only a swarming place for the poor and the ignorant, huddling together for social warmth.  Such people are their own Ghetto gates; when they migrate they carry them across the sea to lands where they are not.  Into the heart of East London there poured from Russia, from Poland, from Germany, from Holland, streams of Jewish exiles, refugees, settlers, few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb, but all rich in their cheerfulness, their industry, and their cleverness.  The majority bore with them nothing but their phylacteries and praying shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and Christianity.  For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution.  He knows that he is in Goluth, in exile, and that the days of the Messiah are not yet, and he looks upon the persecutor merely as the stupid instrument of an all-wise Providence.  So that these poor Jews were rich in all the virtues, devout yet tolerant, and strong in their reliance on Faith, Hope, and more especially Charity.

In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were brethren.  Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim—­descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews who had reached England via Holland—­had modified its boycott of the poor Ashkenazic immigrants, now they were become an overwhelming majority.  There was a superior stratum of Anglo-German Jews who had had time to get on, but all the Ashkenazic tribes lived very much like a happy family, the poor not stand-offish towards the rich, but anxious to afford them opportunities for well-doing.  The Schnorrer felt no false shame in his begging.  He knew it was the rich man’s duty to give him unleavened bread at Passover, and coals in the winter, and odd half-crowns at all seasons; and he regarded himself as the Jacob’s ladder by which the rich man mounted to Paradise.  But, like all genuine philanthropists, he did not look for gratitude.  He felt that virtue was its own reward, especially when he sat in Sabbath vesture at the head of his table on Friday nights, and thanked God in an operatic aria for the white cotton table-cloth and the fried sprats.  He sought personal interviews with the most majestic magnates, and had humorous repartees for their lumbering censure.