The majority bore with them nothing but their phylacteries and praying shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and Christianity.

For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution.

He knows that he is in _Goluth_, in exile, and that the days of the Messiah are not yet, and he looks upon the persecutor merely as the stupid instrument of an all-wise Providence.

So that these poor Jews were rich in all the virtues, devout yet tolerant, and strong in their reliance on Faith, Hope, and more especially Charity.
In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were brethren.
Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim--descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews who had reached England _via_ Holland--had modified its boycott of the poor Ashkenazic immigrants, now they were become an overwhelming majority.

There was a superior stratum of Anglo-German Jews who had had time to get on, but all the Ashkenazic tribes lived very much like a happy family, the poor not stand-offish towards the rich, but anxious to afford them opportunities for well-doing.