In Europe their chief place of retreat was Holland. While this was under the government of Spain, they were as sternly excluded from it as from every other portion of his Catholic Majesty’s dominions. But when the long struggle for independence ended in the emancipation of the Seven United Provinces, the Spanish and Portuguese emigrants were favourably received there. In 1590, three Portuguese Jews, the advanced guard, so to speak, of a numerous host which was to follow, were hospitably entertained. From Embden in 1594 came ten more, who had borne the Portuguese names of Lopes Homen and Pereira, but who, as soon as they had settled in the Dutch capital, resumed their original designation of Abendana. The first synagogue was built there, in 1598. Notwithstanding the flight, however, of so many of the so-called New Christians from Portugal, enough of them remained behind to form a powerful party in the capital, which more than once, during the latter part of the century, interfered with considerable effect in the affairs of the State. It remains that we say somewhat more respecting those Jews who still continued, as we have said, to reside in Spain and Portugal. A stranger, and at the same time a more instructive, history is not to be found in the annals of the world. Bigotry has never been so blind, so determined, so unscrupulous, as it was in Spain under the iron rule of the Inquisition. Arbitrary power has never been exercised more freely, more persistently, more pitilessly, than by Torquemada and his successors. The eyes of the Inquisition were everywhere—spying out men’s ways, not only in their discharge of public duties, but following them, Argus-like, into the privacy of their family intercourse—nay, into the solitude of their closets and bedchambers. Their ears drank in men’s secret whispers, uttered only in the hearing of their nearest intimates—their wives or their children. They did not hesitate to inflict the most dreadful tortures in order to elicit the information they desired. They spared, in the prosecution of their task, neither the weakness of womanhood, the tenderness of infancy, nor the infirmities of age. Yet they could not penetrate the mystery of secret Judaism. Men obtained the highest rank in the State, and filled the most important offices, honoured and dreaded by all men, who nevertheless belonged to this despised and proscribed race. The blood which was supposed so to degrade the man in whose veins it ran was owned by the greatest and noblest of the land—the marquis, the duke, and the prince, with their high-sounding titles and their lengthy pedigrees. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, it is related of the celebrated Portuguese minister, Pombal, that the king, having proposed at a meeting of the council that all who were of Jewish descent should be obliged thenceforth to appear in yellow caps, attended at the next council with three yellow caps in his hand. The king having inquired the