THE IBERIAN PORTENTS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—The intense interest manifested among the educated Jews, especially of the Sephardim, throughout the civilised world regarding the events, passing and to come, in the Iberian Peninsula is not wholly, or even principally, ascribable- to the promise of requital for the long-drawn terrors of the Inquisition and the Great Expulsion. In Portugal the inter- mingling of the invading Goths with the Celtiberian Jews of the Roman colonies must have proceeded as far as anywhere in the peninsula, and the lengthened and mild dominance of the Saracens and Moors must have accelerated miscegenation. The Jewish communities on the Western side were probably at one time even more numerous and powerful than those on the Mediterranean side, and during the many centuries of the Dark and Middle Ages the Jews had become allied with the chief nobility of most of the petty kingdoms into which Old Spain was divided. Orobio states that in the Synagogue at Amsterdam he met brothers, sisters, and near relations of the best Portuguese families, and that the greater part of the clergy, even Archbishops and Bishops, were descended from them. This is corroborated by the following historic anecdote of the famous Marquis de Pombal. Joseph L ordered that all Portuguese who were in any way allied to, or descended from, the Hebrew race should wear a yellow hat. The old Marquis (then Minister-in-Chief) shortly after appeared at Court with three of them under his arm. The King, smiling, asked him : " What do you with these ? " He replied : " I have them in obedience to your Majesty's com- mand, for I really do not know a single Portuguese of note who has not Jewish blood in his veins." " But," said King Joseph, " why have you three bats ?" The Marquis answered : " One is for myself ; one for the Inquisitor-General by your side; and one is—in case your Majesty should desire to be
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