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SPANISH JEWS INNOCENT OF THE CRUCI- | no one. To the proud and wicked he is un

FIXION.

Mr. Southey prefaces this letter in the following words: When Toledo was recovered from the Moors by Alonzo VI., the Jews of that city waited on the conqueror, and assured him they were part of the ten tribes whom Nebuchadnezzar had transported into Spain, not descendants of Jerusalem Jews, who had crucified Christ. Their ancestors, they said, were entirely innocent of the crucifixion; for when Caiaphas, the high-priest, had written to the Toledan synagogues to ask their advice respecting the person who called himself the Messiah, and whether he should be slain, the Toledans returned for answer that, in their judgment the prophecies seemed fulfilled in this person, and therefore he ought not by any means be put to death. This reply they produced in the original Hebrew, and in Arabic, as it had been translated by command of King Galifre. Alonzo gave ear to the story, had the letter translated into Latin and Castilian, and deposited among the archives of Toledo. The latter version is thus rendered by Sardoval."

yielding; and because he tells you your sins In the notes to Southey's " Don Roderick," to your faces, ye are his enemies, and bear there is a letter relative to the Jews, so re- him ill-will. We inquired of the man the markable and so curious that I have at- year, month, and day of his (this prophet's) tempted a translation, although the original birth, and we remember that on the day of is in quaint old Spanish, differing as much his nativity three suns appeared here in the from modern Castilian as the English of our | heavens, which by little and little formed days does from the English of Chaucer's. themselves into one; and when our fathers beheld this sign they were astonished, saying to the assembly,' Messiah will soon be born, or mayhap he is already come into the world.’ Beware, therefore, brethren, lest he (Messiah) be come, and ye did not recognize him. Moreover, the same man told us that one of his shepherds said that about the time of the nativity certain Magi, men of great wisdom, came to the Holy Land, inquiring the place of the holy child's birth; and also that Herod, your king, was astonished, and sent for the wise men of the city, asking them where the child should be born. They inquired of the Magi, and they said in Bethlehem of Judah. The Magi said that a star of great brilliancy led them from far to the Holy Land. See now if the prophecy be not fulfilled which says, Kings shall behold, and shall walk in the brightness of his nativity.' Beware lest you persecute him whom you ought to receive with pleasure and hold in honor. But do whatsoever to you shall appear right. For our parts, neither by our advice, neither by our will shall this man be put to death. For should we do such a thing, in us might be fulfilled the prophecy which says, They gathered themselves with one consent against the Lord, and against his Messias.' And, although you be men of much wisdom in such matters, this advice we give you, lest the God of Israel be angry with you, and destroy your temple a second time; and know this for a certainty that it soon will be destroyed. This is the reason why our forefathers escaped from the Babylonish captivity. Pyrro being their captain, empowered by King Cyrus, laden with much riches, in the sixty-ninth year of the captivity, dwelt at Toledo, being there received by the Gentiles; and not willing to return to Jerusalem to build the temple, which was again to be destroyed, they built one in Toledo."

Here follows the letter in the old Castilian tongue, of which the following is a translation :

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"Levi, chief of the synagogue, and Samuel and Joseph, honorable men and of good report in the congregation of Toledo, to Eleazar Nugad, high-priest, and to Samuel Canud, and to Anus and Caiaphas, good and noble men of the congregation of the Holy Land, health in the God of Israel. Your messenger, Azarias, a master of the law, has brought us your letter, by which you inform us of the signs and acts of the prophet of Nazareth. A certain person of the name of Samuel, the son of Amacias, lately passed through this city, and he related many good deeds of this prophet; that in his conduct he is very meek and humble, freely conversing with the miserable, doing good even to his enemies, while he does injury to -Ladies' Companion.

A. C.

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From The Cornhill Magazine. THE SOCRATES OF THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE. WHAT is the value of the portrait which the old philosophers have left us of Socrates? Is our Socrates the Socrates of the Athenian people? or are we accepting a myth'made to the image of our own likings as the man whom we claim to have given Greece the highest of all human teachings, and to have illustrated them by the highest of all human traits? Why that homage paid to him by a posterity removed from his day by a generation, and that indifferent credit in which he lived among the accomplished citizens who knew him best, and to whom he was nearly as familiar as the members of their own households? Odd as it is that the antiquity posterior to his own times, and the people of our own, so differently circumstanced as to almost every ingredient in the formation or literature, such as have made immortal of opinion, should be found taking precisely the same high estimate; it is still more curious that some of the most enlightened of his contemporaries, his own near neighbors, should have discredited him as a buffoon, or eccentric busybody during life, and should have made him end it as a malefactor.

of certain homely oral expositions of social and moral well-being which he made to his fellow-citizens. That he lived the life he taught; that he died the death his principles demanded; that his practice, in fact, did not discredit his teachings, opens quite another subject; namely, that inner excellence, which is rarely considered in our estimates of a human greatness. The obvious facts are, that in a country where the government, the army, and the arts offered the only openings to high distinction, it was not his lot to command in war or lead the councils of his country in peace; that it was not his glory to save it from the shame of foreign | conquest, or that injury of domestic tyranny which he shared with it; that he was no orator, no poet, and left behind him none of those excellent works in history, philosophy,

not a few of his contemporaries. How, then, has it happened that the most unconsidered character in Athenian public life has become the most commanding figure in its history? To what chance do we owe it, that a repute the most equivocal in the roll of philosophers during his life should have merged on his death into the most assured and illustrious of celebrities?

It would be pleasant in this age of historical doubt to make up debatable ground out of a character so solidly established in pub- In trying to understand how this great lic opinion; and the discussion might prove teacher stood in so unfortunate a relation to quite as prolific as any we have had out of his epoch, we cannot do better than take a the difficulties of celebrated biography. It mental photograph of him as he stood in the so happens that the anomaly is so well au- ripened greatness of his later years, winding thenticated that it is almost as easy to have, up his mission of usefulness in the midst of as not to have, doubts about its cause; for the citizens who were so soon to give it its the great man lived in an age and country due climax; taking him as he stood in some of eminent historians and acute-minded phi- favorite spot in the most beautiful city of losophers, little as his doom suggests the the world, at that moment, however, shorn fact, thanks to whose full records and ex- of many of the glories in the midst of which, uberant commentaries, we know him nearly for half a century or more, it had flourished as well as, following the precept of the as the queen and mistress of the civilized Delphic temple, he endeavored to know himself; that is to say, a great deal better than we know our own Shakspeare, or the Italians their Correggio or Dante.

Another of the strange inconsistencies in the celebrity of Socrates is that, unexampled as it is, it was raised on no better foundation than talking. As the great men we have named are known to us only by what they did, he is known to us only by what he said. Beyond a poetic trifle or two, with which he amused himself in prison, he wrote nothing; and he is all he is with us because

world. There, in the centre of the city, stands the Arthur's Seat of Athens, the sacred Acropolis, with its circuit of two miles, where temples and institutions and porticoes and marble gates and colossal statues of deities and of men nearly as divine tower aloft over the citizens, standing out in the clearest sky and balmiest climate in the world in the most beautiful proportions the skill and genius of inspired men had ever given to the work of their hands. On one side of the great city flows the rapid Ilissus, under its fringed canopies of plane-trees, fed

at this point by the wilder Eridanus. There, | bust health and rude physical enjoyment, on the other side, runs the torrent-like Ce-you see him marking out his man, seizing phissus, both meandering in crystal clear-him by the button, or the appendage that ness and delicious freshness toward the sea, does duty for it, and learn, as the victim is that may be seen a few stones'-throw off, addressed by name, that he is a rich tanner,* glistening like a colossal mirror, waiting to re- who has a reputation for ability on which he ceive their waters. Filled with a lively pop- claims to be one of the leaders of his fellowulation of some hundred thousand citizens, citizens. A ring forms of half-laughing, strangers, and slaves,-whom Paris, after the half-sulking spectators, curious to see how humiliating campaign of 1814, may recall to the aspiring candidate will fare in the little us, there is one thing human-and, as far discussion into which they are sure he will as we know, only one thing human-that be inveigled. A few homely questions, folhas survived unchanged the half-century of lowed by as many answers, and the gentleincredible vicissitudes which the city has man who felt competent to govern the State passed through,-Socrates, now an institu- stands convicted of knowing nothing of the tion rather than a man. To-day we have first elements of the science on which he him in the meadow alongside of the Ilissus, fancied he was so well informed. There is accompanied by Xenophon, Plato, and a few consolation, however, for him under his deof the more accomplished or enthusiastic of fect, if he only knows how to apply it. The his pupils. To-morrow his morning will be man who has unhorsed him has been despent in some of the gymnasia, or if the clared the wisest of mankind by Apollo, and Agora has its meeting, or some other public yet is no better than himself on the same subplace has drawn its crowd, there will stand ject; that is, knows no more than he, except the well-known form of Socrates, waiting for the circumstance that he knows his ighis occasion to turn some event or per- norance, -knows that he knows nothing. son into missionary account. We have The flaneurs laugh, turn on their heel; the intimated what in fame he now is to us. vanquished disputant sneaks off with the asWhat seems he there to the acute and surance, "I can't say I like it; " and the highly-gifted citizens who have seen eo philosopher confiding himself to a friend or much of him, have heard so much more two who remain by his side, and who reabout him, and who are just now puzzling mind him that he has made another enemy, their active fancies as to the position they and can afford it, says, " Ay, and the advanaccord or will accord him? How adjudge tage on his side, nothing; on that of the they the strange-looking old man by their side public, simply that the Athenians know with that emphatic personality of his which what our great statesmen are made of.” in the largest assembly would be the first to And this suggestion of an added danger attract the artist's attention, and which may brings us to the inquiry, What really is the safely be pronounced the most prominent place which the great philosopher occupies of objects wheresoever he goes? To this in the love and hatred of the sovereign townsstranger, just come from unfortunate Cor- men who hold in their hands the power of cyra, he looks as though one of the marble life and death over him? What are the Sileni he has been studying in a niche of feelings, what the opinions of the twenty yon temple of Bacchus had taken flesh un- thousand free citizens about him during this der the prayer of the Pygmalion who had incubation in their midst of the most remarkcarved it, and stepping down from its pedes-able historical greatness men have ever been tal, were busying itself inquiring what these called upon to admire? The contrast is the Athenian worshippers were thinking about humiliating one so often shown in the annals with their recent niggardliness in its patron's of every people, between the lot of the man worship. He has the bare ponderous head of genius himself and the honors accorded to with shining bald crown, large, prominent his memory. eyes, thick lips, and flat, turn-up nose, with huge exposed nostrils, under which the Athenian artists impersonated their ideal of Bacchanal enjoyment. As you are studying that meanly-robed, barefooted figure, of ro

Yet for the Athenians there is an explanation, which, if it does not diminish our regret, at all events, takes away our surprise. While we see but the immortal genius great * Anytus.

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