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make room for Jehovah as an assessor to their own Capitoline Jove. This being declined, it was supposed at first that the overture was too overwhelming to the conscious humility of Judea. The truth neither was comprehended, nor could be comprehended, that this miserable Palestine, a dark speck in the blazing orb of the Roman empire, had declined the union upon any principle of superiority. But all things became known in time. This also became known; and the delirious passion of scorn, retorting scorn, was certainly never, before or since, exemplified on the same scale. Josephus, therefore, profoundly aware of the Roman feeling, sets himself, in this audacious falsehood, to propitiate the jealousy so wide awake, and the pride which had been so much irritated. You have been misinformed, he tells the Romans; we have none of that gloomy unsocialty which is imputed to us. It is not true that we despise alien gods. We do not worship, but we venerate Jupiter. Our lawgiver commanded us to do so. Josephus hoped in this way to sooth the angry wounds of the Roman spirit. But it is certain that, even for the moment, he could not have succeeded. His countrymen of Jerusalem could not expose him; they had perished. But there were many myriads of his countrymen spread over the face of the world, who would contradict every word that any equivocating Jew might write. And this treachery of Josephus, therefore, to the very primal injunction of his native law, must have been as useless in the event as it was base in the purpose.

VII. Now, therefore, we may ask, was there ever a more abject perfidy committed than this which we have exposed this deliberate surrender, for a selfish object, of the supremacy and unity in the Jehovah of the Jews this solemn renunciation of that law and its integrity, in maintenance of which seventy generations of Jews, including weak women and children, have endured the penalties of a dispersion and a humiliation more bitter by many degrees than death? Weighing the grounds of comparison, was a viler treason ever perpetrated? We take upon ourselves to say-No. And yet, even in treason there is sometimes a dignity. It is by possibility a bold act, a perilous act. Even in

this case, though it will hardly be thought such, the treason of Josephus might have been dangerous: it was certainly committed under terror of the Roman sword, but it might have been avenged by the Jewish dagger. Had a written book in those days been as much a publication of a man's words as it is now, Josephus would not long have survived that sentence of his Antiquities. This danger gives a shadow of respectability to that act of Josephus. And therefore, when it is asked-can a viler act be cited from history? we now answer-Yes: there is one even viler. And by whom committed? By Josephus. Listen, reader.

The overthrow of his country was made the subject of a Roman triumph of a triumph in which his patrons, Vespasian and his two sons, figured as the centres of the public honour. Judea, with her banners trailing in the dust, was on this day to be carried captive. The Jew attended with an obsequious face, dressed in courtly smiles. The prisoners, who are to die by the executioner when the pomp shall have reached the summit of the

hill, pass by in chains. What is their crime? They have fought like brave men for that dear country which the base spectator has sold for a bribe. Josephus, the prosperous renegade, laughs as he sees them, and hugs himself on his cunning. Suddenly a tu mult is seen in the advancing crowds

what is it that stirs them? It is the sword of the Maccabees: it is the image of Judas Maccabæus, the warrior-Jew, and of his unconquerable brothers. Josephus grins with admiration of the jewelled trophies.

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but what shout is that which tore the very heavens? The abomination of desolation is passing by-the Law and the Prophets, surmounted by Capitoline Jove, vibrating his pagau thunderbolts. Judea, in the form of a lady, sitting beneath her palmsJudea, with her head muffled in her robe, speechless, sightless, is carried past. And what does the Jew? He sits, like a modern reporter for a newspaper, taking notes of the circumstantial features in this unparalleled scene, delighted as a child at a puppet-show, and finally weaves the whole into a picturesque narrative. The apologist must not think to evade the effect upon all honourable minds by

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supposing the case that the Jew's presence at this scene of triumph over his ruined country, and his subsequent record of its circumstances, might be a movement of frantic passion-bent on knowing the worst, bent on drink-' ing up the cup of degradation to the very last drop. No, no: this escape is not open. The description itself remains to this hour in attestation of the astounding fact, that this accursed Jew surveyed the closing scene in the great agonies of Jerusalem-not with any thought for its frenzy, for its anguish, for its despair, but absorbed in the luxury of its beauty, and with a single eye for its purple and gold. "Off, off, sir!"-would be the cry to such a wretch in any age of the world: to" spit upon his Jewish gaberdine,' would be the wish of every honest man. Nor is there any thoughtful person who will allege that such another case exists. Traitors there have been many: and perhaps traitors who, trusting to the extinction of all their comrades, might have had courage to record their treasons. But certainly there is no other person known to history who did, and who proclaimed that he did, sit as a volunteer spectator of his buried country carried past in effigy, confounded with à vast carnival of rejoicing mobs and armies, echoing their jubilant outcries, and pampering his eyes with ivory and gold, with spoils, and with captives, torn from the funeral pangs of his country. That case is unique, without a copy, without a precedent. So much for Josephus. We have thought it necessary to destroy that man's character, on the principles of a king's ship in levelling bulk-heads and partitions when clearing for action. Such a course is requisite for a perfect freedom of motion. Were Josephus trustworthy, he would sometimes prove an impediment in the way of our views and it is because he has been too carelessly received as trustworthy, that more accurate glimpses

have not been obtained of Jewish affairs in more instances than one. Let the reader understand also that, as regards the Essenes, Josephus is not trustworthy on a double reason; first, on account of his perfidy, as now sufficiently exposed, which too often interfered to make secondary perfidies requisite, by way of calling off the field of hunters from his own traces in the first; secondly, because his peculiar situation as a Pharisaic doctor of the law, combined with his character, (which surely could not entirely have concealed itself in any stage of his public life,) must have made it necessary for the Essenes to trust him very cautiously, and never to any extent that might have been irretrievable in the event of his turning informer. The Essenes, at all events, had some secret to guard; in any case, therefore, they were responsible for the lives of all their members, so far as they could be affected by confidences reposed; and, if that secret happened to be Christianity, then were they trebly bound to care and jealousy, for that secret involved not only many lives, but a mighty interest of human nature, so that a single instance of carelessness might be the most awful of crimes. Hence we understand at once why it is that Josephus never advanced beyond the lowest rank in the secret society of the Essenes. His worldly character, his duplicity, his weakness, were easily discerned by the eagleeyed fathers of Christianity. Consequently, he must be viewed as under a perpetual surveillance from what may be called the police of history-liable to suspicion as one who had a frequent interest in falsehood, in order to screen himself; secondly, as one liable to unintentional falsehood, from the indisposition to trust him. Having now extracted the poison-fangs from the Jewish historian, we will take a further notice of his history in relation to the Essenes in our next number.

ANOTHER PASSAGE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Is it a mark of age, Eusebius, that I am gliding into garrulity? Never mind if it be; age is respectable, and has its pleasures, one of which may be in remembering the pains of youth. My garrulity now, however, must be laid at your door; for if you demand another 66 passage of my autobio. graphy," I must needs run on egotistically babbling, till you will perhaps think me advancing to my second childhood. But what passages of life have I worth noting? Yet Mr Babbage has told us that the most insig. nificant word we utter, through the motion it gives to the air, has its influence over the whole material world, so that involuntarily we shape it to be what it is and what it will be. If so with the external, who can deny the influences of things in the moral world? So here I am swimming grandly by help of Mr Babbage's philosophical corks; and, like many other speculators, float upon the surface, unconscious of the depth beneath the argument. It is time, if I am to give you a new passage, to swim "sine cortice." I will therefore tell you an incident to which perhaps I owe all the sense of the ridiculous I possess; and which, trifling as it was in itself, upon much less grand surmises than Mr Babbage's, may have altered (if that be possible-so I will say fixed) the destiny of more than one individual. The incident, too, was ridiculous in itself, and, like an April day, had as much wet as dry. "Hinc illæ lachrymæ.” It has been said to the praise of some extraordinary wits, that they have "set the table in a roar;" but I have flooded a whole community in their own tears, and from those tears have I drawn mirth to myself ever since. I had before that, no perception of the ridiculous; yet that perhaps may not be quite true, and truth in minute things leads to truth in great. I do therefore confess to something like a sense of the ridiculous, to my shame be it said, when my excellent and really learned father read to his numerous children learned discourses on a Sunday evening. I used to think Banbury's caricature of such a demure family party, must have been intended

for us. The affected gravity, the secret mimicry, the ill-suppressed laughter, and occasional nodding of the elder branches, I well remember; and that is all of my childhood that I do remember that I could laugh at: the rest was lachrymose enough. We all come into the world crying, and for a very long period shed tears as fast as eyes can make them, naturally. Laughter is an acquirement, an artrisibility the very mark, the sign, according to some, of our rational humanity. Did you ever, Eusebius, think how this propensity to crying is first combated-how it is even got over? You ought to know, for therein you are a "master of arts," and have always an extempore laugh ready to overthrow the natural bias. How do we ever acquire a sense of the ridiculous? I have often thought, as I have seen the extraordinary grimaces that nurses make to infants and children, that they must be the real teachers of the ridiculous. They look at children as no other human beings do, and speak as strangely, "Nec vox hominem sonat." Perhaps I had a grave nurse, and was therefore all my childhood in the fatuity of dulness and matter of fact. Perhaps, like Pan's nurse, she was more frightened than pleased to flatter, at my infantine ugliness.

"For the nurse in dismay

Ran frighten'd away,

When she saw the babe bearded and bluff."

Even now I am not going to tell you an anecdote of laughing but of crying, and that in so extraordinary a degree, that I made all about me cry; and, speaking of crying, I may observe that I used to think it very odd, when I came to read the classics at the venerable College of St Mary's Winton, that the masters never made any observations upon the manifest unmanliness of the heroes, some of whom did nothing but cry; and as the books were in the boys' hands morning, noon, and night, so did these heroes appear to be perpetually crying. “ Be a man, and don't cry," was the daily, often hourly lesson, even before going to school, and when there the crier was sure to be soundly thrashed. Yet what does he see when he enters, as

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he supposes, upon the heroics of learning, and is man enough to read the Eneid, but a hero who cries in almost every page? Virgil must have been a" crier general." He cries, his shepherds cry, his cattle cry, certainly his horses-all his men and all his women cry. It is not because he made me cry, which he did, and often, that I hate him; but I do, Eusebius, hate Virgil from his melancholy Eclogues to the scoundrel Æneas, and his murder of a better man; and, strange to say, I hate him the more because he compels me to admire him, and in that I understand the hatred of Aristides. His versification, his episodes, must be admired—more than admired; but the vile setting of the jewels is an eyesore-frets, vexes, and hence-hate. How any portion of the sensible or sensitive world could for a moment make a comparison be. tween him and Homer, is past comprehension. The life, the real stir of human action and grand thoughts, delicacy and strength of character, and an infinite variety of portraiture, set off in language that blazes like the mid-day sun, or softens into the mildness of evening light, all that is in the Iliad and Odyssey, rendering those works so perfect and apart from every other work, should surely rescue them from comparison with Virgil's twelve dull Books-dull, barring the episodes; and if they only had remained, what much higher notions we should have entertained of the great Roman poet's genius!

Criticism, Eusebius, will not bring on the incident, the subject of this present passage, or rather forthcoming passage of autobiography. In my last, especially towards the conclusion, in truth I cut but a sorry figure, and was somewhat in the predicament of Mr Puff's heroes, about to go off kneeling-the very worst position, under the circumstances, in which I could have presented myself, besides the difficulty of so going off at all; for my mouse-coloured leather breeches were not the most flexible at the joints, so that I fear I rather slur. red over that part of the tale, and am there presented like many another tale with no very becoming tail-piece. But if then and there, namely at the College of St Mary's Winton, I made many laugh, I was not very long afterwards fully revenged, for I made all

cry. This was what I was then taught to consider "poetical justice," a cant scholastic term, the sense of which I do not pretend to understand; for justice is justice be it where it will, though in a certain place that shall be nameless it hath sadly to contend with " privilege"-and where the "durissima regna," the most hard power of Rhadamanthus reigns, that punishes before it hears," castigatque auditque." I told you that when I first went to Winchester College, I went as a commoner-" hinc," again," illæ lachrymæ ;" for had I been one of the

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gens togata," I might have been spared my first disgrace, the particular college "exhibition" not desirable

for a college gown has often covered all inexpressible things-and therefore would have both covered my inexpressibles, and what they did not

cover.

"What have you under your cloak?" said the foolish man to the philosopher. "Age," says he; "it is therefore I put it under my cloak." Let me then describe a college gown -a Winchester college gown-for they are as unlike the strips of things that go by the name gown at Oxford, as an Irishman's frieze coat is to a dandy's swallow-tail. And our college gowns were put to as many uses as ever was Irishman's great-coat. It was a really ample gown, reaching to the heels, open in front, with sleeves that might be called pudding sleeves, if such things could take their names from occasional contents-but such a name would have been far too particular for the omnium-gatherum capability and capacity of our sleeves. To say they served for pockets is likewise to fall short in the description-they were, however, not unlike the gigot sleeves that in after times became the lady's fashion. The material of the gown was coarse and thick in substance though the original intention of the founder, William of Wykeham, was, that they should be of the finest material, whereof so particular was he, that he specified the cost as well as the fineness of texture. But in process of time money changed its value-so the sum was adhered to, and the texture left to take its chance. We did not grumble at that, for it was warm in winter, and pretty much thrown off in summer, when within the college precincts. The sleevesfor it is on that point I wish to be

particular-were fastened by a button round the arm, before reaching the elbow. However, therefore, the contents of these sleeves might have justified the application of the lines descriptive of King Arthur's men, "who wore long hanging sleeves;" of whom it is likewise said, that all of them" were thieves,"-in fact, these sleeves did not hang, excepting that the occasional weight of a goose un suspended, and for lack of hanging, may have given to them that appear ance. Now do not imagine, Eusebius, by this slip, that we were predatory. There are many ways of coming at a goose-very honourable ones too; and upon that subject I will say no more than vouch for the strict honour of all parties concerned, and assert broadly that none ever deserved basting but the goose, and he generally had it. I said I was only what is termed a commoner when the disaster of the mouse-coloured leathers took place. I should now say, that before the year was out I had the happiness to be a real collegian, having obtained, doubtless by my merit alone, that desirable position in the world. There is an annual election, when those whose ability can work their way off to New College, and those drones who become too big for their hive, are thrust out to make room for others. The examination is not agreeable to a modest youth-a candidate for instant birch and future literature. It takes place in a solemn chamber, in a tower, by and before the capped, and gowned, and banded wardens of the twin colleges of Winton and Oxford-doctors and posers, an odd term, as if their sole business was to "pose" or puzzle; theirs you will perceive, therefore, must be an easy task. The poor boy is put on in some book of Latin, to make the best of it he can. After the account of my Latinity on entering, which I gave you in my last, you will not think it necessary that the young aspirant should be a great commentator. There is on this occasion an odd custom, originating in the purpose of the founder I suppose, that the boys should assist in the chapel as choristers. For after the Latin examination, the warden of Winchester (in my time the famous Grecian and Bishop Huntingford) says to the boy, "Sing, child, sing." This I was, as most were, and are, prepared for, and

the boy has nothing to do but say, not sing the line of the psalm-" All peo ple that on earth do dwell." There was, however, one luckless boy, who had not been initiated in this mystery, and, thinking he would not sell his chance for a song, began boldly"When Dolly was milking her cow.' But instantly perceiving it did not take, as many hands were lifted in protest, he said, deprecatingly, that he could sing a few verses of the "Vicar and Moses," if that would do. The posers were posed, general gravity could not trust its own voice. In this predicament, old TUTT, as we used to call the warden, looked steadily and awfully at the culprit, and said, “ Boy, repeat after me- All people that on earth do dwell.' "Now, go away boy"-and away went the songster and all his hopes. The incident I have to tell having nothing to do with singing, I need not assure you that my incantation was not that of Orpheus, though the listening brute and gentle were dissolved in tears around me. It was an annual custom at Winchester for the boys who werę the best speakers, to deliver, some their own compositions, some the compositions of those who had more wit than voice, and some to speak celebrated speeches, historical or otherwise, in prose and verse; upon which occasion not only the warden and masters attended, but the élite of the town and country came fulldressed to hear the orators, little and big. This took place in the large noble school-room, which was thus well filled. There was a blaze, as a provincial editor might say, of wisdom, fashion, and beauty. I am not going to boast of myself, my dear Eusebius, as one of the orators. In fact, I was always frightened at the sound of my own voice; and though once I was chosen to speak, as being rather a dab at putting the emphasis in the right place, I made, as it seemed, so sad an affair of it, that I never was called upon again to be a public performer. I perfectly recollect my arms not being properly movable in action, but equally extended on both sides, and there fixed, rather on the curve, and the perspiration dropping from my fingers. I thought I was monstrously loud, but believe I only roared" like any sucking.dove." For the rest of the time I remained at

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