OF XEW YORK CITY                          119
 

CHAPTER XII.

While I take pleasure in writing a chapter about an
ordinary old merchant, who has merely his individuality
to distinguish him, I take a double pleasure, when I can
strike out with one who not only represents one of a
class, but who is a type of a grand old race. I have had
the New England class, such as Jonathan Goodhue rep¬
resented, or G. G. Howland ; the old English race, rep¬
resented by Thomas Buchanan; the Scotch by Archi¬
bald Gracie. Noble old Francis Lewis, who was a
merchant, and signed the Declaration of Independence,
was afterwards an insurance broker, was of the Welsh
;lass. I have yet to write his history. I have had the
old Dutch merchant and his descendants, and their
characteristics. I now take up one of a more ancient
class, who, in all ages, and in all nations have seemed
to have had a double nationality — their own, and that
of the country in which they lived.

I have now before me the venerable form of Bernard
Hart, who died about six years ago, at the advanced
age of ninety-one. At all times, and in all countries,
the Israelites have been the leading merchants, traders
and bankers of the world. Mr. Hart was born in Eng
land in 1764. He came to this country in 1777, dur
ing the war, and was then thirteen years old.    He made