Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/139

 necked people—a foolish nation:—as were your fathers, so are ye."

As was the country, so the people:—the country, geographically, was embraced within the circuit of the East; nevertheless, in climate and productions it was European more than it was Asiatic. And so the people—Orientals by origin, by physiognomy, by usages, and yet in many points of mental constitution, and by its restless energy, it was more European than Oriental. Toward the trans-Euphratean races—the ultra-Orientals—the Israelite showed a decisive contrariety or alienation: he refused his sympathies toward the sun-rising; or, if in some instances amalgamation in that direction took place, the sure and speedy consequence was loss of nationality in every sense—physical, ritual, social. The captive tribes, when carried eastward, forgot their institutions—forgot their very name.

But toward the people of the "Islands of the sea"—the European races—the Jew, while maintaining a sullen antagonism, and continuing to rebut scorn with scorn, has done so in a manner that gave proof of his consciousness of what might be called—intellectual and moral consanguinity. By his sympathies, by his intellectual range, by his moral intensity, by his religious depth, and even by his tastes, the Jew has made good his claim to be numbered with those that constitute the commonwealth of western civilization. Intimately consorted with European nations, this integrate people has