Knowing my mother’s turn for the romantic, I had anticipated her delight at the idea of making acquaintance with a noble-minded travelled Spaniard; but unluckily her imagination had galloped off in a contrary direction to mine, and now my only chance was to make her hear reason, and a very bad chance I knew this to be. I endeavoured to combat her _presentiment_, and to explain whatever appeared extraordinary in my love and hatred of the Jews, by recalling the slight and natural circumstances at school and the university, which had changed my early prejudice; and I laboured to show that no natural antipathy could have existed, since it had been completely conquered by humanity and reason; so that now I had formed what might rather appear a natural sympathy with the race of Israel. I laboured these points in vain. When I urged the literary advantages I had reaped from my friendship with Mr. Israel Lyons, she besought me not to talk of friendship with persons of that sort. I had now awakened another train of associations, all unfavourable to my views. My mother _wondered_--for both she and my father were great _wonderers_, as are all, whether high or low, who have lived only with one set of people--my mother wondered that, instead of seeking acquaintance in the city with old Jews and persons of whom nobody had ever heard, I could not find companions of my own age and rank in life: for instance, my schoolfellow and friend, Lord Mowbray, who was now in town, just returned from abroad, a fine young officer, “much admired here by the ladies, I can assure you, Harrington,” added my mother. This, as I had opportunity of seeing, was perfectly true; four, nearly five years had made a great apparent change in Mowbray for the better; his manners were formed; his air that of a man of fashion--a military man of fashion. He had served a campaign abroad, had been at the siege of Gibraltar, had much to say, and could say it well. We all know what astonishing metamorphoses are sometimes wrought even on the most hopeless subjects, by seeing something of the world, by serving a campaign or two. How many a light, empty shell of a young man comes home full, if not of sense, at least of something bearing the semblance of sense! How many a heavy lout, a dull son of earth, returns enlivened into a conversable being, who can tell at least of what it has seen, heard, and felt, if not understood; and who for years, perhaps for ever afterwards, by the help of telling of other countries, may pass in his own for a man of solid judgment! Such being the advantages to be derived by these means, even in the most desperate cases, we may imagine the great improvement produced in a young man of Lord Mowbray’s abilities, and with his ambition both to please and to shine. In youth, and by youth, improvement in appearance and manner is easily mistaken for improvement in mind and principle. All that I had disliked in the