, 1869-07-23
I..rn,n, and scIeuce Of the Jews.

to overlook tho element that has been COM
tributed by the Jewish Rabbis from the
twelfth century downward to the period OF
the Reformation. Forming q language Of
their own, simple but yet comprehensive,
severely philosophical and exact, built upon
the basis of the Scriptural Hebrew, yet bOr-
rowing its nomenclature from the languages
of every country of their captivity and exile
from the ruins of Babylon to the Wharfs
of Amsterdam-the Rabbis, like their an.
cient fathers, have made themselves posses
sors of the treasures OF the Gen:iles, taking
and fabricating into dialect comfortable
to the genius of their own venerable tongue
terms of life and learning and science and
art, from the Arabic and Chaldee and the
Syriac and the Greek and the Latin and the
Italian and the German and the Dutch and
the Spanish and the Portuguese. They have
embodied in those mystic symbols, like so
many emblems of victory over Gentle ma
tions, the results of their labors in the critl-
cism and Interpretation of those Sacred Re
cords, which, in many respects, they must be
allowed best to understand, as being origi'
nally written in their native tongue, OF which
they were made the earliest repositories, and
in relation to which we may still say they
are the librarians of the world.
There is strong and wide spread preju-
dice against the literature and Intelligence ot
the Jews, and, even among Christian men,
it has been too generally supposed that,
leaving out the Hebrew Scriptures, wisdom
has entirely perished from the sons of Abra-
ham. The conclusion, like other prejudices,
has lis origin in ignorance. Because they
have heard of the fables of the Talmud, how
that the ostley of Rabbi Judah. the holy,
was more rich than the King of the Per
slams or how every member of the Sanhed-
rim was skilled in seventy languages; or
how Rabbi John Ben Narbal dispatched
three hundred calves and three hundred
fagons of wine at dinner, or how three hun
dred asses were scarcely able to carry the
keys of the treasure houses of Cora6i; or
how David, by the flight of single arrow,
killed eight hundred men at once; or how
two thousand soldiers, in the army of Coziba,
were endued with suchIadroitness that, while
they rode past, by simple twitch of their
right hand, they could each pluck up by the
roots cedar of Lebanon such persons,
tickled with curious marvels like these, and
being at once strangers to the genius of the
East, abounding in fiction and allegory, have
hastily concluded that all the learning and
requirements of the modern Hebrew are
nothing but collection of falsehood and
infatuation. A judgment as fallacious and
unfounded in regard to Hebrew literature as
if from the Adventures of Jack the Giant
Killer, or the Exploits of King Arthur and
the Knights of the Round Table, stranger
to the comprehensive literature of our coun-
try should conclude that the literature of
England was utterly unacquainted with q
rich aud intellectual philosophy. The fact
is there is no department Of philosophy in
which the modern Jews have not exceled.
They have enriched their language by a
translation into their peculiar dialect of the
finest works of Greece and Persia and Arabia
Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Hippocrates, aud
Galen Avienna, Averroes, and Sacrobosco
are found clothed with the dignity of He.
brew dress. Original treatises in grammar,
and logic, and metaphysics, and criticism
in arithmetic, and algebra, and geometry,
and astronomy-and the most subtle aud
learned questions in hernenuetics and theol-
ogy start up in the old language of the Rab-
bi with an accuracy and skill, with sever.
ity and precision, that may well compare
with the works of the acutest schoolmen, or
of the most accomplished mathematician in
any country or in any age.
= There can be no question that, from the
time of the dispersion of the Hebrews from
the College OF the Gaonim in Cordova in
1889, down to their expulsion from Spain in
1892, when, according to Mariana, eight
hundred thousand were banished, the Jews
were the most learned, scientific, and enter
prising men in Europe. They filed the
chief offices in the court of Spain adorned
the academies of Cordova and Seville and
Granada were chief assistants of Alonzo the
tenth, surnamed the Wise, in making his
sidereal observations, compiling his asrouo>
mical tables, and publishing his Book of Cir
cles in that Chaldean science they were the
instructors of the Moors, and the forerunners
of that brilliant course of discovery which,
under Henry Duke of Visco and Vasco de
Cana, revealed tho headlands of Africa,
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and opened
up maritime road to the commerce and
riches of India. 1t was the Jews who car.
ried the astronomy of Chaldea, the dialectics
of Greece, and the chemistry of Spain into
the universities of France and England.
They taught in the universities of Paris and
of Oxford and students from different parts
of the wrold came AOcking to the plains of
Andalusia.
The works that the Jews have publised
in Venice, in Thessalonica, in Constantine.
pie, and throughout the towns and cities of
Germany, are sufficient refutation of those
who imagine that this branch of literature
abounds 10 few authors. Many thousands of
volumes of Rabbinical literature, in every
species of excellence, are to be found in the
Jewish catalogues. And one may boldly
affirm of the multitude of Rabbinical books
existing at this day in every department of
art and science that the Hebrews, even in
this respect, may with perfect facility be
compared with any Gentle nation.
STRUGGLING actors und actresses, who are
making bare subsistence, to be summarily dis
missed from their enparamenta aud e,utionad r