The Sketcher.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 210, 18 September 1875, Page 5

The Sketcher.

SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE. (From the Daily Telegraph)

“ Loving kindness,” says the Talmud, “is greater than law ; and the charities of life more than all ceremonies.” If this be true, good men are of one religion, and Christians as much as Jews ought to be interested in the memorial which it is proposed to raise to perpetuate the boundless benevolence and unsparing exertions in the cause of freedom and humanity that are connected with the name of Sir Moses Montefiore. The London committee of the Deputies of British Jews, of which for nearly fifty years the venerable baronet has been president, lately resolved that such a memorial ought to be instituted to record “ the noble and arduous services rendered by him both at home and in distant countries, in vindicating on so many memorable occasions the rights of his co-religionists, and in protecting and in assisting the suffering and oppressed without distinction of creed or nationality.” More than three thousand pounds were contributed at this meeting or upon the first list of subscriptions, and there can be little doubt that the fund, of which Messrs. Rothschild’s house is the appointed recipient, will soon be magnified to dimensions worthy of the good and great-hearted man who, equally as a citizen of England and as a member of his own community, has, by his blameless life, done so much to obliterate distinctions between them. In turn Sheriff of London, High Sheriff of Kent, and Baronet of the United Kingdom, Sir Moses is “an Englishman first of all,” and his almsgivings have never known any difference of race or creed ; but he has always faithfully linked his worldly successes with his ancient faith, and wherever his coreligionists live, there he is loved and revered as a leader of his people. It is characteristic, therefore, that when the project of a memorial was submitted to Sir Moses by the committee, he should have desired that the monument should be established in some work of lasting utility for Palestine. In accepting the tribute offered, he suggested that it should take the form of an undertaking for permanently ameliorating the condition of the Jews in the Holy Land by the promotion of industrial pursuits, the erection of improved dwellings, and the acquisition and cultivation of land on a moderate scale ; wishing at the same time that the funds to be raised should be entirely devoted to the encouragement of those who were anxious to help themselves, and that no part whatever should be applied to mere almsgiving. We see the wisdom as well as the fidelity and piety of the aged baronet in this suggestion, and it has been unanimously adopted by the committee in principle, the details naturally depending upon the amount which may be contributed. Now, we do not hesitate to tell the community to which Sir Moses specially belongs that they ought to make this fund a princely one. It would be quite impossible to imagine a worthier object towards which their undoubted wealth ooulcl flow forth than thus at once to help their brethren in the Holy City and its vicinity, and to commemorate for ever the virtues of one whose courage has been as dauntless as hi 3 humanity was wide. For Jews most, but not at all for J ews alone, has this rich and eminent man risen over and over again from his easy chair, and taken fatiguing and perilous journeys, that he might persuade or shame the oppressor to desist from persecution. At an. age when most would look upon the duties of life as long ago finished, this fearless. and faithful philanthropist has again and again departed, with no other safeguard or strength except the dignity of his silver hairs and the weight of his world-known character ; while at each journey cruel laws have been abolished in deference to him, and half-savage countries like Morocco and Roumania have submitted themselves to his spirit of compassion, and have learned justice and mercy from his lips. It must not be, therefore, by any common scale of contributions that those to whom he is such an honor should measure their duty in establishing the memorial. If it is to come up to the stature of this noble nature if it is to betoken what Sir Moses Montefiore has wrought in his lifetime to make poor Jews free and rich ones respected ; if it is to prove how this race can spend its gold when a just purpose is proposed—then we say the “ Moses Montefiore Testimonial” ought to be made something very large and liberal indeed—something that shall truly make the good old man’s name “ blessed in Israel.”

It is, indeed, already blessed there, as every traveller in the East must well know. In that dark and mean quarter of Jerusalem, between Mount Sion and Moriah the Harat-el-Yahoud—where the Jews are compelled to live, and where the poor ill-built exteriors sometimes, though rarely, conceal homes of luxury and wealth—there walks no inhabitant who does not know and revere the name of Sir Moses. There is none among those sad men and women who once a week beat their breasts under the stones of what was formerly the Temple of the Glory of Jehovah, but in his prayer for the “ friends of Jerusalem ” bethinks him of the English baronet. His title—with its soft Italian suggestion of a “ flowery hill,” set high above the low levels of race and creed jealousies to be a pleasant sign of human brotherhood—is in the mouths of swarthy boys and girls with the physiognomy of Joseph and Miriam, who know no other single word of Frankish speech. The Bedouin of the desert has heard about the good old English gentleman, and, repeating his hundred charities in the land, mutters, against his wont when any Jew is mentioned, “ Allah shall give him peace.” Moslem, Armenian, Greek, and Latin, who fight like dogs together in the “ City of Peace,” unite to speak respectfully of the venerable benefactor; and when rain, was wanting lately, and Jerusalem had famine in her narrow streets, they joined the

people of his own communion in petitioning Kir Moses Montetiorc to send them all help. Many of the happy dead who sleep in the wilderness of tombs, under the shadow of that which was once the Temple of Solomon, awaiting, according to their pathetic belief, the day when “He shall come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and judge the nations round about,” owe their much-desired repose in that sacred earth to the charity of the Baronet. There are, too, numbers who now live by his bounty, for whoever turns to the left hand on emerging from the Jaffa gate will come to a suburb of neat whitewashed houses, built for the shelter of indigent Jews; and every cameldriver from the coast, every water-carrier filling his skins in the pool of Gihon, well knows that Kir Moses Montefioro built those asylums. It is not flattery, but fact and history, thus to record how his name and deeds are already blended with the sacred soil. Yet all this he has wrought as part merely of his many good acts towards all sorts and conditions of men. They furnish a wide foundation for that which his co-religionist may now effect in his name ; and we cannot see how any among them could resist the eloquent words used in the Great Synagogue last month by their Chief Rabbi. Dr. Addler said : “ You are aware that a testimonial is to he raised to perpetuate his noble deeds. Do not forget those great and undying works which he has achieved, and which fill the world with his name. He was your champion, and the champion of humanity ; show that you appreciate good deeds and are mindful of the renown he has won. Kay not, We live in England ; England is our Jerusalem. However much you love your own country, you must not be unmindful of the cradle of your race ; your bosoms must burn with patriotic fire for the native shores of your fathers. Do not leave your brethren to perish ; you are your brother’s keeper. I call you to a duty in which every one may have his share. Do it for Israel’s, for the Holy Land’s sake. Their disgrace is your disgrace ; their honor is your honor.” But Englishmen would like to see—and indeed, are glad to see—Christian as well as Jewish names upon the fast-growing list of these contributories. The Committee of the Testimonial say :—“ It is confidently hoped that the friends of humanity throughout the world, as well as all those whose hearts are animated with the love of Zion, will liberally and cordially co-operate towards the success of an undertaking which must be dear to them, alike on account of the hallowed nature of the object it is intended to effect, and the high admiration they, in common with the world at large, entert.ain towards him in whose honor it is proposed, and whose name it is intended to commemorate.” This seems to us an appeal which may be willingly answered by many Englishmen proud of the enthusiasm for freedom and justice which Sir Moses learned in our air, and glad of the lesson of universal charity which his life has taught. He has gone and come upon his errand of humanity strong in his character as a British citizen. Half the power of his revered name in the East is—he would himself say so—derived from the free land of his birth and abode, where his wife sleeps, and where he, too, will rest. It would be well, we think, to make it even more than half by a general participation in this excellent work of mercy, by which it is intended to preserve the memory of his good deeds. Jerusalem is not more his or theirs than ours ; it belongs by undying and sacred associations to Christendom. If there could be one mere beautiful blossom in the crown of pity which this good baronet wears, we fancy it would result from finding that men of all creeds united to make his name the reason for a common enterprise of charity. The subscription extended thus, we should also like to see the idea of the commemoration enlarged by adding to what is done in Palestine some monument of his good works in this land also. But in either as well as in both, the liberality of his Christian fellow-countrymen would be most happily united with that of his own people. There is a famous passage by an eminent living statesman, which runs : “The time will come when the vast communities and countless myriads of America and Australia, looking upon Europe as Europe now looks upon Greece, and wondering how so small a space could have achieved such great deeds, will still find music in the songs of Zion and solace in the parables of Galilee.” He who penned this was Mr. Disraeli, now Premier of England, and we do not know a time more in need than the present of unsectarian uuit} T , or a name better suited to charm away old and narrow prejudices than the one of Montefiore.

“ BOHEMIANISM.” (From the New York Tribune.) When a man of letters wants money, raiment, roof, and something to eat and to drink, and feels that he lacks all these and even the hope of them, because of his own egregious folly, he finds but little consolation in the prospect of a handsome monument, and of many mortuary notices—ten lines—each of “agate close ” —in the newspapers. Your true laxliving writer would prefer cash payment. His unwise ways, which leave him something of his taste, his talent, his dexterity, his miscellaneous abilities, reduce almost to nothing his love of approbation, his self-respect, and his desire for posthumous remembrance. He likes his cellar, his chat over the beers, his pipe, and a reasonable certainty of bed and breakfast. 'Respectability, which is the leading idea of a monument, irritates one who is in bad repute with sober people, as they usually arc with him. Steady study he is incapable of ; and so he is of persistent work; but he can at a pinch, and under the spur of an empty stomach and pocket, crowd a great deal of study and general toil into a few hours. One who has sometimes a plenty of money, and during long intervals none at all, grows improvident out of the very uncertainty of his income, until at last, though opportunity should present, he can no longer take kindly to fixed financial ways. Sensitive

J jmssibly to the last degree, he uses no precaution against words and deeds which are sure to wound him sharply. Ho • accepts the character of a man who cannot ! get along. Fools gird, proper people chide, old friends look askance, doors are shut in ! his face, loans are refused, the beershop , closes his account, and nothing may be left ; him lint the hospitable streets, up and down which he walks, may be, at midnight, and is not very unhappy, thinking of poets and philosophers, recalling scraps of verse and | anecdote, dreaming of youth and lost love, and the dead ; or of the shore, the meadow, the grove, and the hill which his childhood knew. I To cleanly livers he is a mystery—-to all ! manner of church members, and merchants, i and men of family. Those who read his few things in newspaper or magazine would be astonished at his figure. He isn’t in the ( least nice, and he cannot. Yet if the world were just, it would give him at least $2 :10c. a week as a moral example. There are sermons in his shabbiness and shiftlessness, and warnings in his wants, and in the woeful end which surely awaits him. Lads with a love of literature, who fancy that it would be a fine thing to be a Bohemian, like Savage and Chattc-rton and Dermody, had better think twenty times before they rush into any such folly. For, in the first place, if there were no material points to be considered, beginners should take heed of the waste of ability which the so-called Bohemian life brings with it. They will not find it pleasant at the end of a loose and unbridled career to reflect that they might have done much and have done so little—a few verses, a tale or so, a farce, few jokes in the comic newspapers, and a miscellany of iron and ink stuff forgotten in the reading. Of course, their light performances have creditable elements —brilliancy, perhaps, humor, good feeling, a suspicion of high and honorable aspiration. It is generous, doubtless, for a writer to put his best into his public writing, and to reserve his worst for his own daily life and conversation ; but such liberality comes to no good at last. Bad habits take away the power of good work. Without their constant companionship, a man forgets what is in the books. Exigency will make him tolerant of his own hasty faults, and unmindful of the duty of doing his best for the mere sake of doing it. Sensual pleasures will render the finest hand coarse in time. “He who drinks beer,” said Dr. Johnson, “ thinks beer ;” and the stronger the beer, the smaller the thought, may be added. Moreover, a want of method will make results fragmentary and quality unequal, while the waste of precious time and the unimproved “once” of opportunity, will crown the disaster of an ill-spent life. Then will come men’s pity, harder to bear than their reproaches ; the sting of conscience ; the sense of failure ; want, mortification, the extreme of discomfort, and at last death and the grave, with the undertaker’s bill paid by the charitable and a monument raised by subscription ! Young gentlemen still in Liber Primus, this is the brilliant Bohemianism of which you sometimes pleasantly dream. Our advice to you is to have nothing to do with it. Love literature as much as you please, but cultivate a habit of paying your debts, of saving your money, of improving your time, of keeping sober, and of wearing clean shirts ? There isn’t a writer living by his wits in this great city, who will not, in his serious moments, tell you that this is good counsel. He may repeat it to you over | the mug of beer which you are to pay for, warning you to do as he preaches and not as he practices. Then he will drink the beer and wait for you to offer him a cigar.