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AMUSING ANECDOTE.

The two great sections of our community in Holland, the Germans and Portuguese, are not, it appears, on the most intimate terms. A German hawker called on a lady to sell some goods; she refused to see them, saying she would not deal with Jews. "Why not, madam?" asked he. "Why?" answered she, "because they killed our God." "Nay, madam,” the Jew replied, "that was not we, the German Jews, it was the Portuguese Jews." "Oh!" said she, "in that case let me look at your wares."

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DIALOGUES ON LOVE.

Garcilasso de la Vega, a captain in the service of the King of Spain, was a son of one of the unscrupulous conquerors of Peru, and, by maternity, of the blood royal of the Incas. He was born at "Cuzco, in Peru, the seat of Atabalippa," in 1540; when twenty years old he was sent to Spain, where he maintained an honourable reputation during a life protracted to the age of seventy-six.

The military part of his personal history was not of much consequence; the part he gave to letters was more interesting and important. This portion he began in 1590, with a translation of the "Dialogues on Love," by Abarbanel, a Platonizing Jew, whose family had been expelled from Spain in the persecution under Ferdinand and Isabella; and who in Italy had published this singular work under the name of "The Hebrew Lion." The attempt, as far as Garcilasso was concerned, was not a fortunate one. The "Dialogues," which enjoyed considerable popularity at the time, had been already printed in Spanish, a fact evidently unknown to him; and though, as it appears from a subsequent statement by himself, he had obtained for his translation the favourable regard of Philip the Second, still there was an

odour both of Judaism and heathen free-thinking about it, that rendered it obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities of the State. Garcilasso's first work, therefore, was speedily placed on the Index Expurgatorius, and was rarely heard of afterwards.-TICKNOR. History of Spanish Literature. vol. iii. p. 144. (See further.)

SPANISH INTOLERANCE.

To

The condition of things in Spain at the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, seemed to announce a long period of national prosperity. But one institution, destined soon to discourage and check that intellectual freedom, without which there can be no wise and generous advancement in any people, was already beginning to give token of its great and blighting power. The Christian Spaniards had from an early period been essentially intolerant. their perpetual wars with the Moors, had been added, from the end of the fourteenth century, an exasperated feeling against the Jews, which the government had in vain endeavoured to control, and which had shewn itself at different times, in the plunder and murder of multitudes of that devoted race throughout the country. Both races were hated by the mass of the Spanish people with a bitter hatred; the first, as their conquerors, and the last, for the oppressive claims which their wealth had given them on numbers of the Christian inhabitants. In relation to both, it was never forgotten that they were the enemies of that Cross under which all true Spaniards had gone to battle; and of both it was taught by the priesthood, and willingly believed by the laity, that their opposition to the faith of Christ was an offence to God, which it was a merit in His people to punish. When, therefore, it was proposed to establish in Spain the Inquisition, which had been so efficiently used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses,

and which had even followed its victims in their flight from Provence to Arragon, little serious opposition was made to the undertaking. Ferdinand, perhaps, was not unwilling to see a power grow up near his throne, with which the political government of the country could hardly be in alliance; while the piety of the wiser Isabella, which was, however, but little enlightened, led her conscience so completely astray, that she finally asked for the introduction of the Holy Office into her dominions as a Christian benefit to her people.* After a negotiation with the court of Rome, it was established in the city of Seville, in 1481; their first Grand Inquisitors being Dominicans, and their first meeting being held in a convent of their order, on the 2nd of January. Its earliest victims were Jews. Six were burned within four days, when the tribunal first sat; and Mariana states the whole number of those who suffered in Andalusia alone, during the first year of its existence, as two thousand, besides seventeen thousand who underwent some sort of punishment less severe than that of the stake; all, it should be remembered, with the rejoicing assent of the mass of the people, whose shouts followed the exile of the whole body of the Jewish race from Spain in 1492, and whose persecution of the Hebrew blood, wherever found, and however hidden under the disguises of conversion and baptism, has hardly ceased down to our own days.TICKNOR. History of Spanish Literature, vol. i. P. 408.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

Mary de Medicis sent to Italy for a celebrated physician, named Montalto. He was of the Jewish religion, and expressed a willingness to come to the French court, but only on condition that he might be allowed there to exercise

* PRESCOTT'S Ferdinand and Isabella, Part I. c. 7.

freely the requirements of his faith. As soon as he arrived in Paris, Henry IV. sent for him, and thus addressed him : "Freedom of conscience is a holy thing, God forbid that I should violate it; exercise then uninterruptedly, you and your family, the worship of your fathers, your conscientiousness in religion is a pledge to me of your conscientiousness as a physician." The king did still more; he loaded Montalto with proofs of his favour, and his respect for conscientiousness went so far, that he allowed him a relay of horses, when he had to visit a distant invalid on Friday, in order that by arriving in Paris before sunset, he might not encroach upon the sanctity of the Sabbath rest.— Quoted in the Voice of Jacob, vol. iv. p. 109..

THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

It is known that the Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, pretended to have discovered in a miraculous manner the site of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There is an old tradition that Helena did not trust altogether to supernatural guidance in her quest, but that she tortured some Jews in order to elicit any information which might be preserved and kept secret by members of the old faith. Three Israelites of note were immured in a dungeon without food, and when they were almost dead by starvation, one of them said. to his fellow-sufferers, that the place where Jesus had been executed had been shewn him by his father, to whom it had been pointed out by his grandfather. His companions mentioned that disclosure to their jailer. The Jew was taken from his dungeon and forced to conduct the empress to the place of which he had spoken.-Sunday at Home.

EXTRAORDINARY INFORMATION.

In the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxxvi. p. 596, is the

following peculiar piece of information: "By the Jewish law as to adultery, the woman was put to death as well as the man, so that the parties should neither of them marry again."

INTOLERANCE.

There can, indeed, be little doubt that a chief cause of the hostility felt against the Christian Church was the intolerant spirit it at one time displayed. The Romans were prepared to tolerate almost any form of religion that would tolerate others. The Jews, though quite as obstinate as the Christians in refusing to sacrifice to the emperor, were rarely molested, except in the periods following their insurrections, because Judaism, however exclusive and unsocial, was still an unaggressive national faith. But the Christian teachers taught, that all religions, except their own and that of the Jews, were constructed by devils, and that all who dissented from their church must be lost.-LECKY. European Morals.

CURIOUS TRADITION.

The rabbins aver that there are seven persons over whom the worms of the grave have no power, viz., Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Miriam and Benjamin. Some add David to these, because it is said, "My flesh shall rest in safety."— Yalkut Shimoni, fol. 95, Frankfort edition.

FEAR OF GOD.

Il y a des gens, dont il ne faut pas dire qu'ils craignent Dieu, mais bien qu'ils en ont peur.-DIDEROT. Pensées Philosophiques.

The idea is also strangely confused in the remark :—

Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d'autre crainte. -RACINE, Athalie.

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