The contributor is probably the George Lumley who contributed the signed article "La Lanterne" to the Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1869. "La Lanterne" is a discussion of Henri Rochefort's periodical of that title; it gives extensive quotations from the periodical. The source of the H.W. article "Jews in Rome" is likewise a French periodical. Motivated by public interest in the sensational Mortara case, the article describes the Jewish ghetto in Rome and the conditions under which the Jews live, the information being taken from a series of articles by Edmond About in the Moniteur.

"Fatalism" like "Jews in Rome" is also derivative. It relates a Serbian folk tale from the collection compiled by Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic. The contributor's source is obviously the German translation Volksmärchen der Serben, 1854, where the story appears as "Das Schicksal". (The contributor seems not to have been overfamiliar with German - or he occasionally read his text carelessly: "versetzte ihr ... einen Schlag über den Rücken" he translates "put a snake down her back". The contributor's only comment on the story is that it illustrates the curse that a fatalistic belief can be to a people. The same story is related in the A.Y.R. article "Servian Story-Telling", Sept. 20, 1862.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.