OCTOBER 75 



To return to my time in Germany. The weather 

 grew cold and foggy, and my expeditions from Cronberg 

 into Frankfort were fewer than I could have wished, 

 and many sights I did not see at all. 



Among the towns of which I have an early, though 

 faint, recollection, not even Paris itself is more utterly 

 and entirely changed than Frankfort. Only here and 

 there does anything remain that recalls Goethe's descrip- 

 tion, so familiar to the readers of his ever -enchanting 

 autobiography, that perfect mixture, ' Truth and Poetry.' 

 The Jewish cemetery, full of interest with its unbroken 

 record from the twelfth century, I did not see, though to 

 my mind it must be one of the most interesting spots in 

 Europe. This feeling would only be understood by the 

 English, the awful hatred of the Jews universal on 

 the Continent being happily unknown to us. The 

 world changes so much, and yet so much remains the 

 same. Who would have imagined that at the end of the 

 nineteenth century Jewish persecution would be the 

 same as in the Middle Ages ? If it were possible, would 

 not the gates of the Ghetto be shut in the same cruel 

 and unjust way as years ago ? Hatred of the Jews 

 seems to me the one real bond that unites France, 

 Germany, and Russia. It is generally attributed to 

 Disraeli, but I believe it was Heine who first said : 

 ' Every nation has the kind of Jew it deserves.' 



I am told that in this Jewish cemetery at Frankfort 

 the surnames on the tombstones date back in many cases 

 three hundred years. The old graves have generally 

 only a first name (one cannot say Christian name), with 

 a locality, mentioned ; as, for instance, ' Hannah of 

 Hamburg.' The Jews seem to regard this cemetery as 

 an even truer record of their families than we consider 

 our peerage. The Judengasse has virtually disappeared. 

 I never saw it but once in my childhood, when I felt the 



