wished to be merged in the people of their native
lands. Scorn flung at a Jew as such would have roused all his sympathy in griefs
of inheritance; but the indiscriminate scorn of a race will often strike a
specimen who has well earned it on his own account, and might fairly be gibbeted
as a rascally son of Adam. It appears that the Caribs, who know little of
theology, regard thieving as a practice peculiarly connected with Christian
tenets, and probably they could allege experimental grounds for this opinion.
Deronda could not escape (who can?) knowing ugly stories of Jewish
characteristics and occupations; and though one of his favourite protests was
against the severance of past and present history, he was like others who shared
his protest, in never having cared to reach any more special conclusions about
actual Jews than that they retained the virtues and vices of a long-oppressed
race. But now that Mirah's longing roused his mind to a closer survey of
details, very disagreeable images urged themselves of what it might be to find
out this middle-aged Jewess and her son. To be sure, there was the exquisite
refinement and charm of the creature herself to make a presumption in favour of
her immediate kindred, but - he must wait to know more: perhaps through Mrs.
Meyrick he might gather some guiding hints from Mirah's own lips. Her voice, her
accent, her looks - all the sweet purity that clothed her as with a consecrating
garment made him shrink the more from giving her, either ideally or practically,
an association with what was hateful or contaminating. But these fine words with
which we fumigate and becloud unpleasant facts are not the language in which we
think. Deronda's thinking went on in rapid images of what might be: he saw
himself guided by some official scout into a dingy street; he entered through a
dim doorway, and saw a hawk-eyed woman, rough-headed, and unwashed, cheapening a
hungry girl's last bit of finery; or in some quarter only the more hideous for
being smarter, he found himself under the breath of a young Jew talkative and
familiar, willing to show his acquaintance with gentlemen's tastes, and not
fastidious in any transactions with which they would favour him - and so on
through the brief chapter of his experience in this kind. Excuse him: his mind
was not apt to run spontaneously into insulting ideas, or to practise a form of
wit which identifies Moses with the advertisement sheet; but he was just now
governed by dread, and if Mirah's parents had been Christian,