stream; where he sees, in memory savours, the Elysian end of Commerce:
frontispiece of a tale to fetch us up the out-wearied spectre of old
Apicius; yea, and urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the market for
the purchase of a costlier mullet!

But is the Jew of the usury gold becoming our despot-king of Commerce?

In that case, we do not ask our country's poets to compose a single
stanza of eulogy's rhymes--far from it. Far to the contrary, we bid
ourselves remember the sons of whom we are; instead of revelling in the
fruits of Commerce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied
windows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond Thames, away to the
fishermen's deeps, Old England's native element, where the strenuous
ancestry of a race yet and ever manful at the stress of trial are heard
around and aloft whistling us back to the splendid strain of muscle, and
spray fringes cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoops and
hillocks, and Death and Man are at grip for the haul.

There we find our nationality, our poetry, no Hebrew competing.

We do: or there at least we left it. Whether to recover it when wanted,
is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and
coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and red-stubble chins, might
take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the
capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to
whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy.
Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been
backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for
jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of
lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess him of his greedy gettings.