"Now was come about Holy Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous table here in Rome, should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, undertrampled and bespitten upon beneath the feet of the guests; and a moving sight in truth this, of so many of the besotted, blind, restive, and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally brought--nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in'), haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace...."--_Diary by the Bishop's Secretary,_ 1600. Though what the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:-- IX. "Groan all together now, whee-hee-hee! It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me! It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed, Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist; Jew-brutes, with sweat and blood well spent To usher in worthily Christian Lent. X. 'It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds. It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed Which gutted my purse, would throttle my creed. And it overflows, when, to even the odd, Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God." _R. B. Browning, Holy Cross Day._ This custom of compelling Jews to listen to Christian sermons was renewed by Leo XII., and was only abolished in the early years of Pius IX. The walls of the Ghetto also remained, and its gates were closed at night until the reign of the present pope, who removed the limits of the Ghetto, and revoked all the oppressive laws against the Jews. The humane feeling with which he regarded this hitherto oppressed race is said to have been first evinced,--when, on the occasion of his placing a liberal alms in the hand of a beggar, one of his attendants interposed, saying, "It is a Jew!" and the pope replied, "What does that matter, it is a man?"