prison, neither can the anger of Zahoran, though it should rise as the whirlwind. Sweep not, therefore, Akiba into his grave, O my father; for Leah's love must assuredly go down there with him, and her life also.'

If Zahoran was confounded at the speech of Akiba, he was yet more so at what he now heard. He frowned upon his daughter and withdrew himself from her, musing deeply on these things.

When a few days had passed, Zahoran called Leah before him and said, Would'st thou, indeed, become the wife of Akiba, my herdsman, and live with him in his hut in the valley, feeding thy father's flocks and cattle?' And Leah answered, I would.' Again Zahoran spoke, ' But would'st thou not rather become the wife of a man who should be famous in his day, and worthy of future renown for such thou may'st have-that so thy love might take greater pride in its object?' And Leah answered, I would, if Akiba were that man.' So Zahoran left his daughter with a perplexed thought and a serious brow.

And again, after a few more days, he summoned her to his presence, and said, 'What can Akiba do besides tending cattle, and how can he become great in his generation?' At these words

Leah wept and answered, I know not, O my father; but if the pressure of the world's ever-shifting sands kill him not, nor the winds and the tides oppose and cast him to and fro, so that Leah die while he becomes old in endeavour and grey with time, I believe that he could rise to honour and be famous among men.' 'Then,' said Zahoran, let him go forth. Bear to Akiba these ten shekels of gold; bid him become worthy of Zahoran's daughter, and he shall have her for his wife, nor want Zahoran's blessing on his house.'

So Leah went to Akiba, sitting beneath a tree in the distant pastures, and told him all that Zahoran her father had said. And Akiba arose with a swelling bosom and a resolved soul; and he blessed the name of Zahoran, and bent his steps towards the city of Jerusalem.

Until the sun went down to his lonely bed, and the silent moon rose up into the dim and infinite solitude, Leah remained watching the spot where she had last seen the retiring form of him she loved.

While the slow years moved onward to their pit, and no tidings of Akiba reached her ear, the shadows of evening renewed his form, and the echoes of the valleys wafted his voice to her soul. In visions of the noontide she roved far into the future, till time was lost in eternity. In visions of the night she beheld the past as present, and walked hand in hand with Akiba through the sweet-scented fields and woods, until the dews falling fast upon them, caused her to awake amidst the moisture of many tears. visions of the morning, when the fresh-born earth is silent and unpeopled, she beheld his return and became his wife, joying in

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the depth of his unceasing love, and in the sweet smiles of her children playing on the grass. For the morning dreamer hath what dreams he listeth.

Meantime the city of Jerusalem had fallen before the sword of Titus, and many wars and changes came to pass; but Leah's mind was filled with one thought and one hope. And the name of Akiba at length reached Leah, and Zahoran her father, coming upon them like a sudden beam of light through the window of a house that hath been dark for many years. Zahoran was no longer a rich man, for his lands had been laid waste and his herds destroyed by the fire and the sword and the hunger of war; but Akiba had become a great Rabbi, and was accounted one of the most learned doctors in the city of Jerusalem. The young men and those even who had passed the meridian of manhood, flocked to receive his instructions; nor was it long before the number of his scholars amounted to some thousands.

So Leah became the wife of the great Rabbi Akiba, and the poor man Zahoran received wealth at his hands; and the happiness of all of them was very great. For even thus did the passion of love, which so often leads to vain fancies and foolish acts, that cause misery when the fever is over, lead Akiba to great knowledge and to wisdom, which is the right application thereof, and also to riches and joyfulness of heart.

And Akiba said to Leah, Thou seest that I have done all that it behoved me to do, so that I might obtain thee for my wife. Not of myself have I accomplished this, but by the strong love which God had planted in my soul, making it equal to all high deeds. Now, therefore, that my task is accomplished, let us return to the green valley where I first beheld thee; thou and thy father and our little child; that Akiba may devote the rest of his life to thy happiness, and in giving thanks to God, who hath turned the voice of the herdsman into the chief teacher of a mighty city, by reason of the high nature wherewith he was endowed, and the pure passion that called forth its unknown powers!'

When every thing was prepared for their departure, Baroquebas, the leader of a strong faction which had just sprung up in the city, came to Akiba by night, and conversed with him a long time on those matters. Now this Baroquebas had been one of the chief pupils of Akiba, and was a man of subtle wit and an ambitious disposition. He showed to Akiba his claim to be King of the Jews, and spoke with a wily tongue until Akiba believed in the rightfulness of his cause, and came over to the faction he had created in the city. And Baroquebas persuaded him to remain yet a little while in Jerusalem to support him in his struggle.

*The number has been estimated at 24,000! This is probably a great Hebraism, more consistent with the grand style of Eastern hyperbole, than matter of fact. But learned men were, no doubt, in much greater request and estimation at that period, than in the ignorant present.'

Loud tumult now reigned in the city, and dissension and strife pervaded it, even from the centre to the outer walls. The sword leapt forth from his dark sheath, as a meteor cuts the night: the ery of the slayer and of the dying rose in the air. And while Baroquebas smote on the right hand and on the left, Akiba uplifted his voice in the public places with impassioned eloquence, calling upon all men to cease their violence and the unholy shedding of blood, and to receive Baroquebas as their king.

But the faction was not strong enough of itself to contend with the soldiers, and the people would not rise and acknowledge Baroquebas. So Baroquebas was slain, with most of his supporters. And the soldiers seized Akiba while he was yet speaking, and they dragged him down by the hair of his head, and drew him in this manner through the public streets, and cast him into prison.

The faction being thus quelled, and the city reduced to its former order, Akiba was led from his prison before the chief rulers, to receive their sentence. But as he was a great doctor, and held in high estimation by the people, he was permitted to plead his cause, so that he might incline the hearts of the judges to show mercy towards him. And Akiba, lifting himself up from amidst his chains, spake thus:

I stand here, O judges and rulers! accused of conspiracy and treason, purposing to set up a king of the Jews. It is most true that I have striven to that end, and Baroquebas, who is slain, was the man for whose sake my life is now cast beneath your uplifted hands. Baroquebas was my scholar long since, and I sought to instil into his mind the principles of true knowledge and uprightness, and all virtue. I seduced him not to this act of rebellion, as my accusers have said. I believed in the justness of his claim that he made known to me but a short time ago; and if he be an impostor, as ye all declare, then it was Baroquebas who seduced me. But since he is now dead, and his cause with him, suffer me to depart in peace. The shadows that fall from Mount Horeb, are they not lost when the fiery sun goeth down; and how can my presence darken the thrones of present power, seeing I have no such light of mine own, nor have I aught more to seek in this place? My labours in the great city have been the labours of knowledge and virtue, and I have given the fruits to thousands among you. la return for this, ye have but given a little labour, a little time, and a little gold. Weigh therefore the unequal exchange against this my offence; and weigh also a large debt of gratitude against the small revenge upon one man's life, so that in the fair estimate I may go my way, and find a quiet grave when God shall see fit to recall me.'

And a voice cried from the midst of the crowd; a loud voice as of one who had drank of new wine; Hast thou not cast unhallowed spells among the people? Hast thou not practised

magic arts, and art thou not a blasphemer among men, speaking treasonable things against the chief rulers?'

Now this man had also been one of the scholars of Akiba and he had been hired to swear these things against him. But Akiba, in no wise shaken, answered with a solemn voice:

• Behold the malice of the common world, its envy and crookedness of heart! Is gratitude a hateful thing, and doth it make the gall rise to feel it as a debt that is due? Is sympathy the flower of a day; the insect whose life is but a single moment; or is it a cloak to hide the secret knife of the hypocrite and the backbiter? Lo! I have taught the ignorant to know God and nature; I have put strong thoughts into the brain of the idle and the weak, and they have walked uprightly, even as they were sincere of faith. I have changed the reveller into a godly man: and his children have blessed me for their father's sake. Doth sorcery or magic do these things? What if the art of the magi, which boasts of turning the sun into a bloody stream, and the moon into a dark blot; what if it could change the waters of Jordan into fixed crystal, or the ocean into a solid pearl in his rocky shell; what if it could harden the gardens of Damascus into coloured metals and hanging jewels; what were it all, but turning the vitality of nature into a petrific beauty, far less wondrous and glorified than the living forms of infinite workmanship and subtle operation? I value not the retrograding powers of the magi; I practise them not, neither seek I to know them. I have spoken nought against the rulers, as men, but only for the claim of Baroquebas, who caused me to believe that he was entitled to be king of the Jews. Therefore should the chief rulers, being of rightful authority, honour me for my doings, knowing by the same token that I should in like manner have stood forth on their side, had their station been usurped by other men. If Baroquebas was an impostor, then have I been his dupe to the same degree; which should gain me sorrow and commiseration, rather than hatred and punishment. My early years were all passed amidst the innocent fields; then came I straightway to this city, and led a secluded life, giving up my soul to the acquirement of learning. What wonder is it, O judges and rulers, that I should be little versed in the crafty snares of men, the hypocrite or the ambitious? But hearken unto me now with a serious ear. Have ye ever stood alone in a wide space beneath the dome of night? Have ye marked the fixed silence of the stars-the infinitenessthe harmony? Think of this! Now turn to the atom before ye, and what boots it that revenge should cast this body back into the dust, a few hours before it is needed? Suffer me to leave this city, with Leah the wife of my bosom, and Zahoran her father, and all those who dwell in my house; and Akiba will trouble ye no more. And I will return to the valley where I tended my master's herds, and lay my bones there in peace and thankfulness.

principal aims of philosophy, to determine with precision the ideas as they are termed by Plato, the essences as others have called them, of those great genera and species under which we necessarily or habitually arrange all the objects of our knowledge; philosophers have differed, even to contrariety, in their notions of the real nature of those genera and species. Some have ascribed to them an objective reality, as things existing in themselves; others, more philosophically, have considered them as merely subjective, the creatures of our own minds. To state the same thing more clearly-some, including the greater number of the philosophers of the last two centuries, consider classification to be conventional, subject to no laws but those which convenience prescribes ; while others, including most of the ancients, and the prevailing sect among the Aristotelian schoolmen of the middle ages, thought that genera and species exist by nature; that every individual thing naturally belongs to a certain species, and cannot be subjected to any other classification; and that as there are individual substances, so there are also universal substances, corresponding to our general or class names, and with which the individual substances which we rank under those classes are in a sort of mysterious communion. Thus, there are not only individual men, and individual stars, but there is also Man in general, and Star in general; which do not consist of individual men or stars considered in the aggregate, but are entities existing per se. John, Peter, or Paul are only constituted men by participating, in some strange way, in this universal essence of humanity.

We have stated this doctrine in its most systematic form and in its extreme extent, as it was conceived by that portion of the schoolmen called the Realists, who, however, had little warrant for it from the oracle in which they implicitly confided, their master Aristotle. To the same school, though in a somewhat qualified sense, the speculations of Plato decidedly assimilate him. His tendencies (for opinions, let us once more repeat, are not on such subjects to be ascribed to him) led him to attribute self-existence to genera and species. In the present dialogue he adverts only to those genera which form the basis of our great moral and emotional (or as the Germans say, æsthetic) classifications. The Just, the Brave, the Holy, the Beautiful (in English we more readily personify these abstractions by the words Justice, Courage, Holiness, Beauty) existed according to him as essences or Ideas, of which all sublunary things which we decorate by these names were but resemblances or copies: a doctrine shadowed forth in the mythos which occupies so conspicuous a place in the present dialogue. But the Ideas or essences of all other things had equally, in his view, an independent existence; and to these pre-existent ideas as his types or exemplars, the Creator fashioned all that he called into existence by his will. This is the doctrine more or less vaguely alluded to by those who speak of the Platonic or as it is sometimes called the Divine Idea.

Views not indeed the same but analogous to these, are professed at this day by most German philosophers, and by their followers in France and England. It is natural that persons holding such opinions, should deem these Ideas (for they have endeavoured to bring back the Platonic word to its Platonic sense) to be the objects of the highest knowledge; the knowledge to which the term Philosophy ought to be confined; and that to apprehend an idea as One and as Many,' to detect and distin

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