The Jews of Tunis are Rabbinical, that is to say, they are of that class who teach for doctrine the tradition of men, and thereby make the Word of God of none effect. The study of the writings of their Rabbis, is considered by them more meritorious than the reading of God's Holy Word. From the Talmud, and other standard works, they gather many absurd notions:-one of which is, that females are not responsible beings, and also that it is a sin to instruct them. The care of their souls is left entirely to their husbands or fathers; and they themselves appear perfectly satisfied with an arrangement which removes from them all anxiety with regard to a future state. The higher classes of Jewesses are kept in almost as much seclusion as their Mahommedan country women, from whom they borrow many customs, and not a few superstitions. They wear charms and amulets to prevent the much-dreaded effects of the Evileye, &c.; and use the same methods of beautifying themselves as their Moorish neighbors -such as painting their eyebrows to meet, dyeing the hands and feet with henna, &c; and as obesity is considered a mark of feminine beauty in Barbary, the Jewesses, by a system of cramming, often succeed in arriving almost at perfection with regard to it, and are frequently excessively stout. The Jewesses are generally speaking darkcomplexioned, though there are many among them remarkably fair. Some are very handsome; and I remarked that like the generality of Easterns, their hands and feet are small and well-formed. They are fond of display, and therefore wear quantities of jewellery. On the occasion of a marriage, it is considered no disgrace for the bride to borrow jewels from her neighbors. The short, outward robe and drawers worn by them reach to the ankle, and are composed of thin silk. The dress is richly embroidered on the bosom; and the short, loose sleeves are of white net, or muslin, or sometimes gauze spotted with gold. The full drawers fit closely round the ankle, where they are thickly embroidered with gold, and are always of a different color from that of the dress. Light brown and cherry color are favorite contrasts, or scarlet or green, purple and yellow, pink and straw-color. The very poorest Jewesses wear common print dresses: but even they are always provided with one gay, silk dress for holiday occasions. When they walk abroad they are enveloped from head to foot in a sifsara,-which is a shawl or scarf of very large dimensions, composed of the finest white wool and silk, and is consequently a most expensive article of dress. The poor use sifsaras of white calico. Moorish women, when they are permitted to leave their homes, wear a covering of black crape over the face, leaving only the eyes visible, but the Jewesses only cover the mouth. The usual dress of the Moors of Tunis consist of a red or blue braided or embroidered jacket, with shash sleeves; a white or sometimes colored vest; full, white or dark blue drawers to the knee; a scarlet silk scarf encircling the waist, no stockings and red or yellow slippers. The shashea, or scarlet cap of the East, completes the costume. This dress, when worn by the opulent, and therefore composed of rich materials, is very elegant. Peculiarly folded white turbans, and long, flowing robes are worn by professional The descendant of Mahommed may be known by his green turban, and sometimes robe of the same holy color; while the hadge, or pilgrim, is distinguished by his red turban. The dress of the Jew is very similar to that of the Moors, except that he is obliged to wear black shoes and a black turban, by which he may easily be distinguished among them. If unmarried he is not allowed to wear a turban at all, but in its place a small black skull-cap, which just covers the crown of his shaven head, and is very unbecoming. men. On each side of his temples a small square patch is visible, which has not been shaven, but clipped as closely as possible. The reason for this we read in Lev. xix. 27, "Ye shall not round the corners of your head." Shaving the head is a universal practice in Tunis, and is the means of promoting cleanliness among the people, who are, generally speaking, extremely dirty in their persons and habits. The Mahommedans leave one long lock on the crown of their heads, by which they believe they are to be drawn up to heaven by their prophet on the last day. The Jews are active and industrious, and carry on various trades very briskly. Nearly all the business of European merchants is transacted by Jewish brokers, who are ac, quainted with the customs of the country, and the different languages required in their vocation. As they are clever workmen, they are often sent for to work balic for the Beythat is, they are compelled to work, with very little, or sometimes no remuneration; while their families, who depend on them for support, are left in a starving condition. Besides this, they are oppressed in various ways, and made to feel themselves strangers in the land of their birth. Oppression has made them mean and cowardly, and deteriorated them from their character in several respects; yet they still possess many redeeming qualities. Jewish parents are most indulgent to their children; they consider it wrong to correct a child, in any measure, until it has arrived at the age of six or seven years; when, of course, the work is much more difficult than if commenced from a proper period; and even when their system of training does begin, it is so defective as to be productive of very little improvement in the temper and disposition of their offspring ;-so that whatever amiability may be found in them, is not to be attributed to the pains bestowed in their moral training. The religion of the Tunisian Jews principally consists in the scrupulous observance of a series of fasts and feasts. In their fasts they do not taste food from sunrise to sunset; and they are considered the most religious Jews who provide the most sumptuous feasts at the Passover, and other festivals. Hence debts are often contracted by the poorer classes, who think it a duty to honor the festivals by living well while they last, so that after they are over the wretched prisons of Tunis are crowded with Jews. The frequent occurrence of these festivals caused great interruptions in our school occupations, as they are made complete holidays. From Bentley's Miscellany. ROBERT SOUTHEY AND CHARLES LAMB. SOUTHEY. To pen me up in this great city, would be to crush the life out of me. I should feel a canopy of iron over my head, and never breathe freely again. Even a flying visit is not without its distressing sensations; but to settle me down as a resident, would be death by slow torture. LAMB. That comes of living among barbarians and pagans. You have learned their naughty ways. They have taught you to blaspheme the divine metropolis, and to say that the gods of the country are better than ours. My heart bleeds for the hardness of yours. I wish I could convert you. SOUTHEY. London has its attractions-more of them, in fact, than any other city in the world. I find in it warm-hearted friends, literary society, public libraries, and book-stalls. LAMB. The last not least. Bless the man who broached the idea of a book stall, and the man who realized it; and all the men, women, and chicks who have ever stood at the hospitable board, reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting. I'm afraid Father Adam is not involved in any of these beatitudes. Probably his experience never transcended the limits of the apple-stall. Apples got a long start of books. A garden came whole ages before an epic. SOUTHEY. The book-stall is certainly a nucleus of charms for me-one of the redeeming features in the face of London. LAMB. What a capital intellectual dinner the he stands, breaking the edge of his appetite poor man about town can get at one! There with a heavy fragment of "Locke on the Mind" (say, for a hungry dog, the chapter on Essences, real and nominal); then discussing an unctuous slice from the prime part of Sir Thomas Browne; then smacking his lips over tit-bits from the side-dishes of poesy and old romance; and possibly, by way of dessert, cracking a few of my nuts, and inwardly drinking the health of Elia, as a broth of a boy. He's a black-hearted heathen if he finishes such a repast without make us truly thankful!" a SOUTHEY. I am glad you provide variety for this diner-out of your vagrant fancy. Devoted to books as I am "My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse night and day" LAMB. own "Evil communications corrupt good manI can quite take ners." No, thank you. your word, when you assure me of your wickedness. As for Keswick-strip me naked, if ever you catch me spying out the nakedness of the land again! The man who longs for the country deserves to be sent there; that is all I have to say. The ancients placed skulls on their banquet-tables-grim still I require diversity. Driving one horse till he is winded and you are knocked up, is bad. I like to finger the ribbons of a four-in-memorials of discomfort. The moderns place hand better. LAMB. I fancy your ambition travels beyond the stage-coach proprieties of four; you undertake twice that number with alacrity, and keep the whip-hand of them down hill all the time. Southey, your greed of books is insatiable. The daughters of the horseleech are nothing to you. Tell me, now; when you left Keswick, how many volumes shared your affections? SOUTHEY. gardens at the back of their houses, for (I suppose) a like purpose. What else was the first garden than a prison-out of which Adam was shrewd enough to sin himself? SOUTHEY. You know how a flower fades away when condemned to the doom of your parlorwindow existence; so should I fade away if London were my home-which God forbid! LAMB. I never say "amen" to a curse. As for I was paying attentions to Mosheim's any thing out of London--as for "Ecclesiastical History" LAMB. fields green and poplar-trees, and those blockheads the mountains, and those cold-and-catarrh-mongers the rivers, they are hideous in mine eyes. A penchant not very likely to end in a I had small love for them at the beginning, holy alliance. Go on. SOUTHEY. Also, to Shakspeare's "Othello." LAMB. What a lapse in your flirtations-from the divinity-doctor to the naughty black man! "The nearer the kirk the further from God." SOUTHEY. If you comment thus on my frailties, I shall never get through the list of them. I have to confess a liaison with Isaac Barrow; also a few tender passages with Bishop Parker de Rebus sui Temporis; frequent assignations with Whitaker's "Pierce Plowman;" stolen glances by the score at the "Mirror for Magistrates;" intimate correspondence with Tiraboschi; an unequivocal attachment to the "Niebelungen Lied;" and undisguised familiarity with Rabelais, and several others. LAMB. Most horrible! Turkish license of this wholesale order in a Christian land! SOUTHEY. Follow me to Keswick, and secure by ocular demonstration, proofs of my enormities. and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on further acquaintance. SOUTHEY. You are one of the sincerest of men, and yet utter more insincerities than any man But we know how to interpret them. alive. They must be very freely translated-not literally; and if read backwards or upside down, the sense will often be more readily attained. I will not believe in your professions of hatred to rural scenery. I will not believe that all those "beauteous forms" are but to you "As is a landscape to a blind man's eye." You are not so irreligious as to despise and dislike what God has made, and beheld and pronounced very good. The everlasting hills that stand about my home, how necessary a part of existence they now seem to me! Gazing on them, I have felt what Wordsworth so grandly describes, "A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts." The clouds resting on their summits speak to me of heavenly things, "and in their silent faces I can read unutterable love." Come, let us fraternise: join me at the Lakes, and we will walk and worship together. Nay, I am serious. Throw aside for once the cap and bells. LAMB. For you to put on. And really the cap fits you to a nicety, and the bells discourse most eloquent music-equal to that of the Banbury-cross lady. I must answer Mr. Southey's Sapphics à la Canning (in re "The Needy Knife-grinder"), "Visit Greta-bridge? I will see thee hang'd first!" No, no! London in her shabbiest clothes and seediest moments--suffering with the great plague, for example, or frizzling away in 1666--can at least stare the country out of countenance any day of the week. London is to me, as I once told Manning of Cambridge, a more than Mahometan Paradise, which I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Windermere, and the parson thrown in for a make-weight. Think of the delicious melody of Bow-bells! Talk about that old humbug, Helvellyn-why, have n't we Primrose Hill? Derwentwater, indeed! as if we had not the New River. Have the kindness to contrast a walk in town with a walk in the country-the latter a dull, purposeless, meaningless thing, wherein you meet one clodhopper per mile, and regard a "solitary ass" as a celestial visitation, "beautiful exceedingly"-the former a glorious intercourse with men and manners, with shops and street-criers, with taverns and theatres. What finer spectacle than the Strand in full bustle, or the sweet shady side of Pall Mall, in the height of the season? Now you brush against a cabinet minister; now you overhear the small-talk of two dukes; anon you meet Coleridge and Davy, Mackintosh and Sydney Smith; at the corner of the street you shake hands with Kean, or make an appointment with Young. Are you tired of looking in at that goldsmith's shop window, and examining the brooches and plate, plentiful enough to buy up a baker's dozen of your midland counties? Turn to next door-a pastry cook's, I declare!-you may as well step inside there-and having complimented Miss behind the counter, on the perfection of her cates, after devouring half-ascore of delicacies, the very names of which never startled the stupidity of your northern boors, you scrutinise the next shop, which is a print-seller's, and feast your eyes on the beauties of Stothard and Barry, Opie and LAMB. Ah, Southey! no man can live a day in the streets of London, gazing on its passing crowds, and noting its common incidents, without saying at eventide, "I have seen strange things to day-strange things and sad! Many a time the thoroughfares which I sought for purposes of cheerfulness, present scenes that depress me beyond measure. But, on the other hand, I often shed tears of joy at the mere sight of so much life; and I take long walks at night, when the lamps are lit, and the streets are crowded with men and women whose work is over, that I may indulge in such pleasurable weeping. The fact is, I have formed intense local attachments (as I told Wordsworth, lang syne) in the home of my childhood, youth, and middle age-attachments as many and intense as you hill-folk can have formed with dead nature; and I must cease to be the Charles Lamb of Christ Hospital, and Queen Street, and the South Sea House, before I cease to remember this my Jerusalem. Had I been born and bred "By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains," my predilections might have been all the other way, and a noisy city might have been to me a monstrum horrendum. But I can not bear to think of that. SOUTHEY. You are a man of letters, and not ignorant of that nervous sensibility which is often unduly developed in the student race. Are you not, then, vexed and harassed now and then by the interruptions incident to life in a great metropolis? LAMB. When I lived in Russell street, I was worrited out of life almost by interruptions. It was such a convenient distance for callerssuch a central situation. How I pined after the comparative seclusion of the Temple! A set of fellows who affected interest in literature were eternally dropping in at breakfasttime, at pudding-time, at tea-time, at bed-time. They would honor me with a call at the India House, lean on my desk, and play with my quills, and more than glance at the secrets of my ledgers; they would insist on accompanying me home after business-hours, lest I should have one moment's solitude; and if I got rid of this batch at the door, and scrambled up stairs to be blessed by the phiz of Mary and the perfumes of roast mutton, alas! alas! the knocker soon dealt forth its knell-like strokes, and my digestion, my peace of mind, my evening sympathies with Mary and an old folio, were sacrificed to the ruthless invaders announced to my horror. Behold me sitting in delicious déshabille, in a large room warmed by a roaring fire, and lighted by one dull candle; working away with all my heart, and all my mind, and all my soul, and all my strength; one, as I have often described myself, daily progressing in learning; not so learned as poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as happy. While the citizen author groans under a recurring series of loquacious intruders, my quiet is only broken by the advent of a sociable cat-and very welcome he is. While you have pains and penalties, thick and threefold, attached to the eating of your mutton, I can swallow, ad libitum, that best of all dishes, gooseberry-pie, without fearing the criticism or the company of any anti-gooseberry fool. LAMB. So you are not yet weaned from that infantine love of the pie you once glorified in a Pindaric ode? SOUTHEY. Not I. Still can I sing with as much epicure inspiration as ever,— "What though the sunbeams of the west Blood, glutinous, and fat, of verdant hue? LAMB. Ah, well; may we never, at the oldest, cease to be old boys! I'm sure I've no wish to grow more venerable and sage and hoaryheaded than I am at this moment. I should like to continue at the present point of time -since I can not date backwards in a bill of this kind (what a delightful à priori argument if I could!)-I should like to make a bargain with old Chronos, the grasping thief! that in consideration of the many depredations he hath committed on my person and property, he should for the future let me go scot-free-leaving me my present complement of faculties, friends, funds, teeth, of all these good things, thanks to that old and appetites. I bave already lost plenty curmudgeon with his scythe. SOUTHEY. We can not make a covenant with Death, nor a composition with such a creditor as Time. Dear Lamb! what a balance-sheet he has against you and me since we were young fellows at Bristol, and had our juvenile phizzes "taken" for good Jo-eph Cottle. I often think the final supremacy of time, as proved by the infirmities and sorrows of old age, more to be dreaded than that of death itself, which, if an enemy to the virtuous and wise, is at any rate the last. Of all things I am chiefly affected by change in objects dear to my heart of hearts: the changes wrought by old age are fearful to contemplate; and when I think of them, and feel their premonitory symptoms, and taste their bitter first-fruits, I long for the wings of a |