In almost every mediæval town there was a Jewish district, in which, says M. Depping, their historian, "Jews like troops of lepers were thrust away and huddled together into the most uncomfortable and most unhealthy quarters of the city, as miserable as it was disgusting;" or, as Paul Lacroix describes it, "a large enclosure of wretched houses, irregularly built, divided by small streets with no attempt at uniformity. The principal thoroughfare is lined with stalls, in which are sold not only old clothes, furniture, and utensils, but also new and glittering articles." Within their prescribed limits, all their necessities were supplied, and a dirt-begrimed prison-like synagogue usually occupied the center. But even in these wretched places they were often subjected to cruelties the most severe and sickening. Terrible as were the indignities heaped upon this unfortunate people it must not be supposed that they were wholly unprovoked, or that all the forbearance was on the part of the sufferers. Opinions on these questions are widely divergent, and I refer to them here only to show more clearly the condition of Europe at the time of which I write. * * * * * [Sidenote: THE CHARGE OF CRUELTY.] The Spaniards of the sixteenth century have been called a cruel people; and so they were. Yet they were no more cruel than other nations of their day, and no more cruel relatively, according to the progress of humanity, than are we to-day. Time evolves in many respects a more refined civilization, but the nature of man changes not. Individuals may be less beastly; society may be regulated more by law and less by passion; between nations in their wars and diplomacy there may be less systematic torture, less unblushing chicanery; but the world has yet to find a weightier right than might. I fail to discover in America, by Catholic Spaniards or heathen savages, deeds more atrocious than some committed in India and China within the century by Protestant England, the world's model of piety and propriety; and yet the treatment of Indians in North America by the people of Great Britain has been far more just and humane than their treatment by the people of the United States.