No class had done more to promote the height of commercial prosperity to which Portugal had attained than the Portuguese Jews. In another volume of this Series[11] Mr. Lane-Poole says: “Wherever the arms of the Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find the Jews in close pursuit,” and in no part of the peninsula had they collected in greater numbers than in the great cities of Portugal, especially in Lisbon, Santarem, and Evora. These Jews belonged for the most part to the Sephardim, and were in every intellectual quality superior to the Ashkenazim, or German and Polish Jews; protected by the Moors, they had grown in wealth and power, and when they came under the rule of Affonso Henriques, that great monarch extended the same tolerance towards them. His successors followed his example, and under monarchs with commercial aspirations such as Diniz and John “the Great,” the Jews had been more than protected, they had been favoured. While persecuted in other countries, they had met with consistent protection in Portugal, and they acknowledged the generous treatment which they received by extending the commerce of their adopted country. The Portuguese Jews possessed a high reputation all over Europe for wealth, integrity, and commercial acuteness, and had business agencies and banks in every land, which contributed to the wealth of the country, which had been for centuries their home. Such was the wealthy and industrious class of citizens, which Emmanuel consented to banish from his dominions, partly to please the bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he hoped to succeed, and partly in order to absorb, as the Portuguese crown eventually did, the whole of the coming trade with the East. These unfortunate families were obliged to leave the country, which had been their fatherland, and the cities, which had been their homes, from generation to generation, with but six months in which to prepare for banishment; they were obliged to dispose of their flourishing businesses at a loss, and to start anew in the world to find new occupations and new homes. It is hardly a matter for wonder, that many Jews preferred to be baptized and to become half-hearted Christians rather than expatriate themselves, but these “Novaes Christiãos” had, as will be seen, no reason to rejoice a few years later at their apostasy. With the Jews were banished also many unbaptized Mohammedans, the especial enemies of Ferdinand “the Catholic.” This class had become numerous since the taking of Granada in 1492, when many of them fled from Spain into Portugal, and had been kindly received by John II. It is worthy of notice that the Most Catholic monarchs, who persuaded Emmanuel to take such severe steps against Jews and Mohammedans, who were ready to earn an honest livelihood as free men, made no protest against the thousands of negro slaves, who were being yearly imported into Portugal, and left to their belief in superstitions far more degrading than the religions either of