Though the days of bitter persecution and hatred have gone by, the Jews are still objects of contempt and loathing. Once I remember pointing out to my postillion a beautiful Jewish girl, and, with the fanatic spirit of the middle ages, himself one of the most degraded serfs in Poland, he scorned the idea of marrying the fair daughter of Israel. But this the Jew does not regard; all he asks is to be secured from the active enmity of mankind. "Like the haughty Roman banished from the world, the Israelite throws back the sentence of banishment, and still retreats to the lofty conviction that his race is not excluded as an unworthy, but kept apart as a sacred, people; humiliated, indeed, but still hallowed, and reserved for the sure though tardy fulfilment of the Divine promises."
The Jews in Poland are still excluded from all offices and honours, and from all the privileges and distinctions of social life. Until the accession of Nicolas, they were exempted from military service on payment of a tax; but since his time they have been subject to the regular conscription. They regard this as an alarming act of oppression, for the boys are taken from their families at twelve or thirteen, and sent to the army or the common military school, where they imbibe notions utterly at variance with the principles taught them by their fathers; and, probably, if the system continues, another generation will work a great change in the character of the Jews of Poland.
But to return to the Jews at Minsk. As usual, they gathered around us before we were out of our kibitka, laid hold of our baggage, and in Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish, were clamorous in offers of service. They were spare in figure, dressed in high fur caps and long black muslin gowns, shining and glossy from long use and tied around the waist with a sash; and here I remarked what has often been remarked by other travellers, when the features were at rest, a style of face and expression resembling the pictures of the Saviour in the galleries in Italy. While my companion was arranging for posthorses and dinner, I strolled through the town alone, that is, with a dozen Israelites at my heels and on my return I found an accession of the stiff-necked and unbelieving race, one of whom arrested my attention by thrusting before me a silver coin. It was not an antique, but it had in my eyes a greater value than if it had been dug from the ruins of a buried city, and bore the image of Julius Cæsar. On the breaking out of the late revolution, one of the first acts of sovereignty exercised by the provincial government was to issue a national coin stamped with the arms of the old kingdom of Poland, the white eagle and the armed cavalier, with an inscription around the rim, "God protect Poland." When the revolution was crushed, with the view of destroying in the minds of the Poles every memento of their brief but glorious moment of liberty, this coin was called in and suppressed, and another substituted in its place, with the Polish eagle, by way of insult, stamped in a small character near the tip end of the wing of the double-headed eagle of Russia. The coin offered me by the Jew was one of the emission of the revolution, and my companion told me it was a rare thing to find one. I bought it at the Jew's price, and put it in my pocket as a memorial of a brave and fallen people.