in every civilized country of Europe.  It was before anti-Semitism was in flower, and the people of the time were more responsive even than during the later Kishinev massacres.  Indignation meetings were held.  Both Jews and Gentiles, not only abroad, but even in Russia, protested.  Prayers were offered for the unfortunate.  Cremieux in France and Rabbi Philippson in Germany appealed to the public.  All to no effect.  Grief was especially manifest among English Jews, always the first to feel when their fellow-Jews in other countries suffer, and Grace Aguilar, like Rachel weeping over her children, lamented over her Russian brethren: 

  Ay, death! for such is exile—­fearful doom,
  From homes expelled yet still to Poland chain’d;
  Till want and famine mind and life consume,
  And sorrow’s poison’d chalice all is drained. 
  O God, that this should be! that one frail man
  Hath power to crush a nation ’neath his ban.

At this critical period, Moses Montefiore, encouraged by his success in refuting the blood accusation at Damascus, and stimulated by the many petitions he had received from Russia, Germany, France, Italy, England, and America, undertook the philanthropic mission of interceding with the czar on behalf of his coreligionists.  It is natural to suspect that no trouble is entirely undeserved; it is but human to sympathize with our friends, and yet regard their suffering as a judgment rather than a misfortune.  But Montefiore’s trip to Russia dispelled the last trace of suspicion against the Russian Jews.  In spite of their poverty, he saw numerous charitable and educational institutions in every city he visited.  He found the Jewish men to be the cream of Russia.  “He had the satisfaction,” Doctor Loewe, his secretary, tells us, “of seeing among them many well-educated wives, sons, and daughters; their dwellings were scrupulously clean, the furniture plain but suitable for the purpose, and the appearance of the family healthy.”  To all his pleadings Count Uvarov returned but a single answer:  “The Russian Jews are different from other Jews; they are orthodox, and believe in the Talmud"[44]—­a reason for persecution in Holy Russia!

Montefiore’s visit to Russia, from which so much had been hoped, did not improve the situation in the least.  For all his strenuous efforts, he was compelled to leave the Jews as destitute as he had found them.  Nay, they might truthfully have said to the Moses of England what their ancestors had said to the Moses of Egypt, “Since thou didst come to Pharaoh, the hardness of our lot has increased.”  From the first of May (1844) they were not allowed to continue to earn the pittance necessary to maintain life, as, for instance, by the slavish labor of breaking stones on the highways, with which three hundred families had barely earned dry bread.[45] The great love and respect shown to the uncrowned king of Israel proved to the czar’s officials the existence of some