The “wondrous tale” of the old Gypsy gude-wife concerning the “Things of Egypt” is more wonderful, observe, than aught told of Jewry. Certain of the learned credulous, as we read in the _Evidences of Christianity_ and other such works, essentially one-sided, point to the dispersion and the cohesion of the self-styled “Chosen People” as a manner of miracle, a standing witness to certain marvellous events in its past annals. They ignore or forget the higher miracle of the “tinklers.” Whilst the scattering abroad of the Israelites arose naturally from the same causes which in the present day preserve their union, the powerful principle of self-interest and wealth-seeking, the deeply rooted prejudices, social and religious, fostered by a theocratic faith and by a special and exclusive revelation, the lively tradition of past glories and the promises of future grandeur confirmed by the conviction of being a people holy and set apart, the barbarous Romá[110] are held together only by the ties of speech[111] and consanguinity, and by the merest outlines of a faith, such a creed as caste, or rather the outcast, requires. Still the coherence is continuous and complete; still, like the rod of Moses, this ethnological marvel out-miracles the other, and every other, miracle. Hardly less peculiar is the historical relation of the Jew and the Gypsy. They have many points in common. Both have had their exodus, and are dispersed over the world. Both have peculiarities of countenance which distinguish them from the “Gentiles,” whom they hate, the Goyím and the Busne. Both have their own languages and preserve their racial names.[112] Similarity of conditions, however, which should breed sympathy, as usual amongst men has borne only hatred. But the Jew was wealthy, like his cousin the Morisco. Hence the horrible persecution of the Israelites in Spain (A.D. 1348-98), when a prevailing pest was attributed to their poisoning the water, and which endured till the Hussites drew down upon themselves the earthly “anger of Heaven.” During those dreadful years many of the Hebrews fled to the mountains, the Alpujarras and the Sierras--Morena and de Toledo--and to the wild banks of the Upper Ebro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus. Meanwhile the Gypsies suffered under the conviction that they were Jews who, denying their forefathers, represented themselves to be of Egyptian blood. Presently, when the revenues of the Catholic kings, Henry III. and John II., amounting to 26,550,000 reals (dollars) reduced to our present value, fell under Henry IV. to 3,540,000, the plethoric money-bags of the Israelites led to the establishment of Holy Office and its inquisitorial tribunal (January, 1481). Finally, as if persecution and death were not sufficient, a wholesale expulsion took place in March, 1492. These horrors are still, after the lapse of ages, fresh in the Jewish mind. I have seen at Jerusalem a Khákhám (scribe) so moved