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THIRD BOOK
205

straits, have to earn their bread by manual labour, as common workinen, porters, rural serfs. Their manners teach us that their souls have never been inspired with chivalrous, noble feelings, nor their bodies girt with beautiful arms: a certain obtrusiveness alternates in them with a frequently tender, nearly always painful submissiveness. But now that their intermarriage withi the gentlest blood of Europe inevitably grows more common from year to year, they will soon have a goodly heritage of manners both intellectual and physical: and, in another hundred years, they will look genteel enough, so as not to make themselves as masters ridiculous before those they have subdued. And this is a matter of some importance. Therefore a settlement of their affairs is as yet premature. They themselves know best that a conquest of Enrope or any act of violence are quite out of the question: but they know that, some time or other, Europe may fall as a ripe fruit into their hands if they would only just extend then. Meanwhile it is necessary that they should distinguish themselves in all departments of European distinction and stand among the foremost: till they shall have advanced so far as to determine that which shall give distinction. Then they will be called the inventors and guides of the people of Europe, and cease to offend their sense of proportion. Where shall this accumulated wealth of great impressions, which forms the Jewish history in every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations,