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stood to be a fragment of that used by Mary in some of her religious rites.-Glasgow Herald, 1869.

THE TAPE WORM.

In the "Annales de Médecine" of February, 1841, Professor Wawurch observes, that of 3,864 patients whom he attended at the hospital (La Clinique) at Vienna, he found 206 affected by tape-worm (ver solitaire), among whom were only three Jews. And what more particularly struck him was, that in the course of thirty-four years' previous practice, he met with but one Jew labouring under that disorder. He explains this pathologically that the Jews do not feed upon impure food, and what confirmed him in this opinion was that the three persons mentioned above did not at all conform to the Jewish dietary.-Arch. Israélites.

THE BEARD.

When the custom was introduced among the Jews of Prussia of shaving off the beard, it occasioned great scandal among the orthodox, who considered that parting with the beard was equivalent to renouncing the Jewish religion. A preacher (7) enlarged very strongly against this prac

ברוך אתה בבאך וברוך אתה בצאתך tice, and took for his text

"Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out," and cited a passage in the Mishna, which applies the text to the birth and death of man, and imposes upon him the necessity of quitting the world with the same degree of innocence as when he entered it. A would-be wit, without his beard, charmed with the text, approached the orator, and told him that if he had cut off his beard it was that he might quit the world as he had entered it. "You have not badly applied the text," said the lecturer, "only to be consistent, you should pluck out your teeth.”—Ibid.

JEWISH MUNIFICENCE.

The late Mr. Alfred Davis, who, during his lifetime was a most generous benefactor of the Jews' Free School, has bequeathed to that institution the .princely legacy of thirty thousand pounds.—Jewish Chronicle, Jan. 14th, 1870.

In the same number of this journal will be found a detail of the life and character of this "true philanthropist."

EARLY JEWISH GRAMMARS.

It was only about the commencement of the 10th century that the first efforts were made by the Jews in compiling their grammars after the example of the Arabs. The earliest attempts by Rabbi Saadi and others are lost, but those of R. Yehuda Chayyug (called also Abû-Zakaria Yachya), about the year 1000, and of R. Jona (Abu'l Walid Marwan ibn Ganâch), about 1030, composed in the Arabic language, are still extant. Assisted by these pioneerlabours, Abraham ben Ezra (about 1150) and R. David Kimchi (about 1200) especially won for themselves a classic reputation as grammarians. The father of Hebrew philology among Christians was John Reuchlin, to whom Greek literature also owes so much. But he, as also the grammarians of the next succeeding period, down to John Buxtorf, still adhered almost exclusively to Jewish tradition. It was only after the middle of the 17th century that the field of view gradually widened, and that the study of the sister tongues, chiefly through the labours of Albert Schultens and N. W. Schröder, became of fruitful service to Hebrew grammars.-Dr. DAVIES. Translation. Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar.

NATURALISATION OF THE JEWS.

A remarkable history is the attempt of the Pelhams, in 1752, to legalise the naturalisation of Jews. The Jews,

as is well-known, had been completely banished from England by a statute of Edward I.; and they did not attempt to return till the time of the Commonwealth, but were not formally allowed to establish themselves in England till after the Restoration. The first synagogue in London was erected in 1662. It is possible that occasional physicians or merchants may have secretly come over before; but their number must have been very few, and it is more than probable that Shakespeare, when he drew his immortal picture of Shylock, had himself never seen a Jew.

The hatred, indeed, of that unhappy race in England, was peculiarly tenacious and intense. The old calumny, that the Jews were accustomed on Good Friday to crucify a Christian boy, which was sedulously circulated on the Continent, and which, even now, forms the subject of one of the great frescoes round the Cathedral of Toledo, was firmly believed, and the legend of the crucifixion of young Hew, of Lincoln, sank deeply into the public imagination.

The story was told by Matthew Paris; it was embodied in an early ballad; it was revived, many years after the expulsion of the Jews, by Chaucer, who made the Jewish murder of a Christian child one of his most graphic tales ("The Prioress's Tale"); and in the same spirit Marlowe painted "The Jew of Malta" in the darkest colour.

There does not appear, however, to have been any legal obstacle to the Sovereign and Parliament naturalising a Jew, till a law, enacted under James I., and directed against the Catholics, made the sacramental test an essential preliminary to naturalisation. Two subsequent enactments exempted from this necessity all foreigners who were engaged in the hemp and flax manufacture; and all Jews and Protestant foreigners, who had lived for seven continuous years in the American plantations. In the reign of James II., the Jews were relieved from the payment of the alien duty;

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but it is a significant fact that it was re-imposed after the Revolution, at the petition of the London merchants. In the reign of Anne, some of them are said to have privately negotiated with Godolphin, for permission to purchase the town of Brentford, and to settle there with full privileges of trade; but the minister, fearing to arouse the spirit of religious intolerance and of commercial jealousy, refused the application. The great development of industrial enterprise, which followed the long and prosperous administration of Walpole, naturally attracted Jews, who were then, as now, pre-eminent in commercial matters, and many of them appear at the time to have settled in England, among others, a young Venetian Jew, whose son obtained an honourable place in English literature, and whose grandson has twice been Prime Minister of England.

The object of the Pelhams was not to naturalise all resident Jews, but simply to enable Parliament to naturalise those who applied for it, although they had not lived in the Colonies, or been engaged in the hemp or flax manufacture. As the principle of naturalisation had been fully conceded by these two Acts, which had been passed without any difficulty, and had continued in operation without exciting a murmur; as the Bill could only apply to a few rich men, who were prepared to undertake the expensive process of a parliamentary application, and as they were among the most harmless, industrious, and useful members of the community, it might have been imagined that a Bill of this nature could scarcely offend the most sensitive ecclesiastical conscience. When it was brought forward, however, a general election was not far distant; the opponents of the Ministry raised the cry that the Bill was an un-Christian one, and England was thrown into paroxysms of excitement, scarcely less intense than those which followed the impeachment of Sacheverell.

According to its opponents, the Jewish Naturalisation Bill sold the birthright of Englishmen for nothing; it was a distinct abandonment of Christianity; it would draw down upon England all the curses which Providence had attached to the Jews. The commercial classes complained that it would fill England with usurers. The landed classes feared that ultimately the greater part of the land of England would pass into the hands of Jews, who would avail themselves of their power to destroy the Church. One member of Parliament urged that to give the Jews a restingplace in England, would invalidate prophecy, and destroy one of the principal reasons for believing in the Christian religion. The Mayor and Corporation of London petitioned against the Bill. The clergy all over England denounced it. The old story of the crucifixion of children was revived, and the bishops, who had voted for the Bill, were libelled and insulted in the streets. It passed, after a severe opposition, through the Commons, and received the Royal assent; but, as the tide of popular indignation rose higher and higher, the ministers, in the next year, brought forward and carried its repeal. It is probable, that in the excited state of popular feeling, if they had not done so, the Jews could not have lived safely in England.-LECKY. History of England in the Eighteenth Century.

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BENJAMIN OF TUDELA.

The first European traveller who went far eastward, is Benjamin of Tudela, in Navarre. He penetrated from Constantinople, through Alexandria in Egypt, and Persia, to the frontiers of Tzin, now China. His travels end in 1173. He mentions the immense wealth of Constantinople, and says that its ports swarm with ships from all countries. He exaggerates in speaking of the prodigious number of

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