lest I be accused of giving ear to old wives' fables, if I insert in these pages what is reported all over Europe of the Jew, coeval with the Saviour Christ; however, nothing is more common, and our popular histories have not scrupled to assert it. Following the lead of those who wrote our annals, I may say that he who appeared not in one century only, in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was also in this year seen and recognized as the same individual who had appeared in Hamburg, anno MDLXVI. The common people, bold in spreading reports, relate many things of him; and this I allude to, lest any thing should be left unsaid"."

J. C. Bulenger puts the date of the Hamburg visit earlier. "It was reported at this time that a Jew of the time of Christ was wandering without food and drink, having for a thousand and odd years been a vagabond and outcast, condemned by God to rove, because he, of that generation of vipers, was the first to cry out for the crucifixion of Christ and the release of Barabbas; and also because soon after, when Christ, panting under the burden. of the rood, sought to rest before his workshop (he was a cobbler), the fellow ordered Him off with

• R. Botoreus, Comm. Histor. lii. p. 305.

acerbity. Thereupon Christ replied: Because thou grudgest Me such a moment of rest, I shall enter into My rest, but thou shalt wander restless.' At once frantic and agitated he fled through the whole earth, and on the same account to this day he journeys through the world. It was this person who was seen in Hamburg in MDLXIV. Credat Judæus Apella! I did not see him or hear any thing authentic concerning him at that time when I was in Paris 1."

A curious little book' written against the quackery of Paracelsus, by Leonard Doldius, a Nürnberg physician, and translated into Latin and augmented by Andreas Libavius, doctor and physician of Rotenburg, alludes to the same story, and gives the Jew a new name nowhere else met with. After having referred to a report that Paracelsus was not dead, but was seated alive, asleep or napping, in his sepulchre at Strasburg, preserved from death by some of his specifics, Libavius declares that he would sooner believe in the old man the Jew, Ahasverus, wandering over the world, called by some Buttadæus, and otherwise, again, by others.

1

J. C. Bulenger, Historia sui Temporis, p. 357.

* Praxis Alchymiæ, Francfurti, MDCIV. 8vo.

He is said to have appeared in Naumburg, but the date is not given; he was noticed in church, listening to the sermon. After the service he was questioned, and he related his story. On this occasion he received presents from the burghers'. In 1633 he was again in Hamburg. In the year 1640, two citizens, living in the Gerberstrasse, in Brussels, were walking in the Sonian wood, when they encountered an aged man, whose clothes were in tatters and of an antiquated appearance. They invited him to go with them to a house of refreshment, and he went with them, but would not seat himself, remaining on foot to drink. When he came before the doors with the two burghers, he told them a great deal, but they were mostly stories of events which had happened many hundred years before. Hence the burghers gathered that their companion was Isaac Laquedem, the Jew who had refused to permit our Blessed Lord to rest for a moment at his doorstep, and they left him full of terror. In 1642, he is reported to have visited Leipzig. According to Peck's "History of Stamford," Upon Whitsunday, in the year of our Lord 1658, "about six of the clock, just after evensong,"

3 Mitternacht, Diss. in Johann. xxi. 19.

• Mitternacht, ut supra.

one Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, who had been long wasted with a lingering consumption, was sitting by the fire, reading in that delectable book called "Abraham's Suit for Sodom." He heard a knock at the door; and, as his nurse was absent, he crawled to open it himself. What he saw there, Samuel shall say in his own style :-"I beheld a proper, tall, grave old man. Thus he said: 'Friend, I pray thee, give an old pilgrim a cup of small beere!' And I said, 'Sir, I pray you, come in and welcome.' And he said, 'I am no Sir, therefore call me not Sir; but come in I must, for I cannot pass by thy doore.'

"After finishing the beer: 'Friend,' he said, 'thou art not well.' I said, 'No, truly Sir, I have not been well this many yeares.' He said, 'What is thy disease?' I said, 'A deep consumption, Sir; our doctors say, past cure: for, truly, I am a very poor man, and not able to follow doctors' councell.' 'Then,' said he, 'I will tell thee what thou shalt do; and, by the help and power of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well. Tomorrow, when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and get there two leaves of red sage, and one of bloodworte, and put them into a cup of thy small beere. Drink as often as need require, and when

the cup is empty fill it again, and put in fresh leaves every fourth day, and thou shalt see, through

our Lord's great goodness and mercy, before twelve days shall be past, thy disease shall be cured and thy body altered.""

After this simple prescription, Wallis pressed him to eat "But he said, 'No, friend, I will not eat; the Lord Jesus is sufficient for me. Very seldom doe I drinke any beere neither, but that which comes from the rocke. So, friend, the Lord God be with thee.""

So saying, he departed, and was never more heard of; but the patient got well within the given time, and for many a long day there was war hot and fierce among the divines of Stamford, as to whether the stranger was an angel or a devil. His dress has been minutely described by honest Sam. His coat was purple, and buttoned down to the waist; "his britches of the same couler, all new to see to;" his stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey, deponent knoweth not; his beard and head were white, and he had a white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from morning to night, "but he had not one spot of dirt upon his cloathes."

Aubrey gives an almost exactly similar relation,