“One evening,” says the writer in the _Atlantic_, “I was dining with Mr. and Mrs. Lowell and three other friends, and he began to lament the renaming of old streets which was going on, and the obliteration of the last traces of the Paris of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,--the Paris of the schoolmen and their open-air debates. He spoke of the local history that lay in the mere names of streets and squares,--Rue du Fouarre, Rue des Gauvais Garçons, and several more of which he gave the origin and legend. In the midst of this picturesque and learned disquisition he stumbled upon the class of a celebrated philosopher of those times, seated on their bundles of straw,--a well-known teacher whose name I cannot now recall,--and stated that he was a Jew.
“He instantly began to talk of the Jews, a subject which turned out to be almost a monomania with him. He detected a Jew in every hiding-place and under every disguise, even when the fugitive had no suspicion of himself. To begin with nomenclature: all persons named for countries or towns are Jews; all with fantastic, compound names, such as Lilienthal, Morgenroth; all with names derived from colors, trades, animals, vegetables, minerals; all with Biblical names, except Puritan first names; all patronymics ending in _son_,--_sohn_, _sen_, or any other version; all Russels, originally so called from red-haired Israelites; all Walters, by long descended derivation from wolves and foxes in some ancient tongue; the therefore Cecilia Metella, no doubt St. Cecilia too, consequently the Cecils, including Lord Burleigh and Lord Salisbury; he cited some old chronicle in which he had cornered one Robert de Cæcilia and exposed him as an English Jew. He gave examples and instances of these various classes with amazing readiness and precision, but I will not pretend that I have set down even these few correctly. Of course there was Jewish blood in many royal houses and in most noble ones, notably in Spain. In short, it appeared that this insidious race had and permeated the human family more universally than any other influence except original sin. He spoke of their talent and versatility, and of the numbers who had been illustrious in literature, the learned professions, art, science, and even war, until by degrees, from being shut out of society and every honorable and desirable pursuit, they had gained the prominent positions everywhere.