When Miriam, returning to the mother-of-pearl music-stool, at a signal from her brother, touched the silver and enamelled keys of the ivory piano, and began to sing, Lord Codlingsby felt as if he were listening at the gates of Paradise, or were hearing Jenny Lind.

“Lind is the name of the Hebrew race; so is Mendelssohn, the son of Almonds; so is Rosenthal, the Valley of the Roses: so is Lowe or Lewis or Lyons or Lion. The beautiful and the brave alike give cognizances to the ancient people: you Saxons call yourselves Brown, or Smith, or Rodgers,” Rafael observed to his friend; and, drawing the instrument from his pocket, he accompanied his sister, in the most ravishing manner, on a little gold and jewelled harp¹, of the kind peculiar² to his nation.

All the airs which the Hebrew maid selected were written by composers of her race; it was either a hymn³ by Rossini, a polacca by Braham, a delicious romance by Sloman, or a melody by Weber, that, thrilling on the strings⁴ of the instrument, wakened a harmony on the fibres of the heart; but she sang no other than the songs of her nation.

“Beautiful one! sing ever, sing always,” Codlingsby thought. “I could sit at thy feet as under a green palm-tree, and fancy that Paradise-birds were singing in the boughs⁵.”

Rafael read his thoughts. “We have Saxon blood too in our veins,” he said. “You smile! but it is even so. An ancestress of ours made a mesalliance in the reign⁶ of your King John. Her name was Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, and she married in Spain, whither she had fled to the Court of King Boabdil, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe; then a widower⁷ by the demise⁸ of his first lady, Rowena. The match was deemed a cruel insult amongst our people but Wilfred conformed, and was a Rabbi of some note at the synagogue of Cordova. We are

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