introduction to Mr. Montenero, and had thrown it into the fire.

I was very much provoked; but to my mother, and a mother who was so fond of
me, what could I say? After all, I confessed there was a good deal of fancy
in the case on my side as well as on hers. I endeavoured to forget my
disappointment. My imagination turned again to Shylock and Macklin; and, to
please me, my mother promised to make a large party to go with me to see
the Merchant of Venice the next night that Macklin should act; but,
unfortunately, Macklin had just now quarrelled with the manager, and till
this could be made up, there was no chance of his condescending to perform.

Meantime my mother having, as she thought, fairly got rid of the Jews, and
Mowbray having, as he said, cured me of my present fit of Jewish insanity,
desired to introduce me to his mother and sister. They had now just come to
town from the Priory--Brantefield Priory, an ancient family-seat, where,
much to her daughter's discomfiture, Lady de Brantefield usually resided
eight months of the year, because there she felt her dignity more safe from
contact, and herself of more indisputable and unrivalled consequence, than
in the midst of the jostling pretensions and modern innovations of the
metropolis. At the Priory every thing attested, recorded, and flattered her
pride of ancient and illustrious descent. In my childhood I had once been
with my mother at the Priory, and I still retained a lively recollection of
the antique wonders of the place. Foremost in my memory came an old
picture, called "Sir Josseline going to the Holy Land," where Sir
Josseline de Mowbray stood, in complete armour, pointing to a horrid figure
of a prostrate Jew, on whose naked back an executioner, with uplifted whip,
was prepared to inflict stripes for some shocking crime.--This picture had
been painted in times when the proportions of the human figure were little
attended to, and when foreshortening was not at all understood: this added
to the horrible effect, for the executioner's arm and scourge were of