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subordination to the main action of the piece. The effect is inimitable. Your brilliant groups, dashed in with a flowing historic pencil, are on the whole, except at the first glance, not much more satisfactory than those blank pictures of a committee, or conference, or general council, where every face is a portrait, and where literal truth proves itself so false to nature, that nobody, save an adoring partisan, can look with any patience at the broken surface flecked with many faces, where neither unity nor grace can be. In each group of portraits the temptation to be concise and antithetical, to balance one character with another, and to make angles and circles of a regularity unknown to nature, is always apparent. But no such danger surrounds the single portrait. Here he stands, not requiring to balance himself against any other not obliged to describe or set forth his own qualities in due bound and limit-beaming forth, large, round, and at his ease-certainly not a perfect, as certainly a most genuine, individual. It is very common to say that the sayings and doings of any man, honestly set down day by day, would make the most interesting of books. Never was there a greater fallacy. Not one man in a thousand has the art of showing himself through the envelope of his daily doings. The perpetual disguise in which most of us live, concealed even from our selves, would make the record of our proceedings a most dry and lifeless skeleton of humanity. It is the rarity of the faculty which gives it so great a charm.

Here, however, is the one individual in a thousand-or say in a million, which may be nearer the truth, and a few ciphers more or less matter little-who can tell his own story. It is time to inquire what kind of a story that is which he has to tell. It is the story of a Jew, a native of Franconia, son of a German rabbi, who, stumbling into a perception of Christianity in his childhood, purqued the faint and doubtful light

which had shone upon him through years of youthful virtuous vagabondage, very amusing and curious to read of, living and learning somehow without any apparent means of doing either, among professed Protestants and genuine Catholics, among philosophers and infidels, monks and rabbis, not without glimpses of the greatest personages in Germany, till at length the lad found himself in Rome in the Propaganda, the idea of becoming a missionary having seized upon his youthful imagination. Out of the Propaganda he stumbled again towards Protestantism and England; went to Cambridge, where he learned many things, but not how to shave himself; and terminated this romantic and extraordinary youth by mar rying the daughter of an English earl -a climax as romantic and unusual as the preliminary life. With this passport to the good offices of society, and apparently with hosts of friends attracted by his own genial simplicity, vanity, and honest qualities, he set out upon twenty years of missionary wandering amid the picturesque unknown races of the East, into deserts and dangers and troubles of all kinds, and sometimes to the very brink of death-out of which wonderful career the fortunate adventurer has subsided in his old age into an English vicarage, the strangest unlooked-for termination to a life so various; from the tranquil retirement of which he now sends forth this moving and eventful tale. By means of some missionary books of an odd and unusual description, by speeches and lectures, but, more than all these, by that subtle influence of reputation which carries the name of one man to the end of the world, while it refuses to bear the fame of another not less noteworthy beyond the place where he was born, the name of Joseph Wolff has become a household word to many people, in every quarter of this country which crowned his young adventurous life with such unusual fortunes. Such reputation does not come for nc

thing; and in the book now before us Wolff has justified his fame.

Popular opinion nowadays is as much divided in respect to the Jewish race as it has been in all generations. To some they are still the chosen people affectionately longed after, prayed for, and fruitlessly preached to; to others the meanest and least hopeful of people, remarkable only for that instinct of merchandise and money-making which has been the curse and the support of their race. Sidonia on the one hand, and the keeper of the sponging-house on the other, are only variations in the view. Christendom has resolved to observe no medium in her sentiments regarding this wonderful tenacious family. It is apparent that the popular judgment has but indifferent means of discriminating the highest character of these scattered Hebrews. We have ourselves heard a Spanish Jewess lamenting bitterly that it was a common error among the English to ignore the fact of any aristocracy among her people, and to believe that the Levys, the Mosses, and Cohens, and such usurious brotherhoods, were true representatives of a race which still retained patricians of further and purer descent than any Norman noble. This is doubtless a matter worth the consideration of Jewdespisers; but no vague conclusions on this subject will be half so effective as is a single glimpse into the home of the simple German rabbi, the minister of the little synagogue in the Bavarian village, where devout people gather in little groups to speak of that restoration to their own land which they are not sufficiently enlightened to doubt of where the picturesque traditions of Jewish learning are the portion of the children, and where the pious regulations of life are such as these: "Say the blessing over everything you eat; don't eat with uncovered head; go every day to the synagogue; never lie down without having said, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God."" In such a

house "young Wolff daily listened with the highest interest to the conversation of his father, when the Jews assembled in his house in the evening-time, and he spoke to them about the future glory of their nation at the coming of Messiah, and also about the zeal of many rabbis who had travelled to Jerusalem and Babylon as preachers to the Jewish nation." The rabbi then diverges into miraculous tales of the great Mymonides, of the holy JudahHaseed, and finally of Jesus of Nazareth, about whose merciful and brotherly inclinations towards the Jews a curious Talmudical tradition is recorded. "This history made a deep impression upon young Wolff, so that he asked his father who this Jesus was. And his father answered that he was a Jew of the greatest talent; but as he pretended to be the Messiah, the Jewish tribunal sentenced him to death. Young Wolff then asked his father, 'Why is Jerusalem destroyed, and why are we in captivity?' His father replied, Alas, alas! because the Jews murdered the prophets.' Young Wolff reflected in his mind for some time, and the thought struck him, 'Perhaps Jesus was also a prophet, and the Jews killed him when he was innocent!'-an idea which took such possession of him, that whenever he passed a Christian church, he would stand outside and listen to the preaching, until his mind. became filled with the thought of being a great preacher like Mymonides and Judah-Haseed."

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While these cogitations were revolving in the child's mind, he was accustomed to make daily visits to the house of a neighbour, the village barber-chirurgeon, where he naturally repeated his Talmud stories, and blew his childish trumpet about the coming triumph of the chosen nation. While the little Jew made his simple brag of all that was to ensue upon the coming of the Messiah, the other children laughed and listened; "but one day," continues the narrative, "old Spiess, with his

stern look, said to little Wolff, 'Dear boy, I will tell you who the real Messiah was he was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, whom your ancestors have crucified, as they did the prophets of old. Go home and read the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and you will be convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.' These words entered like a flash of lightning into Wolff's heart; and he can sincerely say that he believed, and was struck dumb. No word came out of his mouth, but he went home to his father's house, and read the 53d chapter of Isaiah in Hebrew with the Jewish-German translation, and then said to his father, 'Dear father, tell me, of whom does the prophet speak here?' His father stared at him and gave no reply; and Wolff dared not to ask him a second time, but went into another room and wept. And then he heard his father say to his mother, who was also weeping, ' God have mercy upon us! our son will not remain a Jew-he is continually walking about and thinking, which is not natural!'"

The young proselyte, of whom this remarkable account was given, was then seven years old!

At eleven, the young hero, tired of the little progress he made, set off for Bamberg to seek his fortune. "What will you become?" asked his father. He replied, "A physician and a preacher like Mymonides." The old Jews who were present stroked their hands over their beards and said, "Woe, woe, woe! Your son will not remain a Jew: he will be mixed with the Gentiles, and go the way of all the Gentiles." With the extraordinary self-reliant adventurous instinct of his race, little Wolff set out thus, not to return again to the paternal roof. He took farewell of the home, which he seems never to have entered again, with a simplicity which shows such a premature entry into the world to be no such wonder among that peculiar people, and set out upon the battle of his life. A more wonderful example of the child-adventurer has

seldom been recorded. He was but eleven, helpless and penniless. He was leaving not only his father's house, but his father's faith, and all he had been brought up to reverence; and he was in search of, not the scanty living which contents the little Savoyard, the only corresponding type we know, but learning, and a career more lofty than his father's. The boy did not stay long in Bamberg. He was sent out thence with a curse from the house of the relation to whose protection he had betaken himself, when his inclinations and purposes became manifest, and so wandered forth forlorn, a little pilgrim of learning and faith. Worthy this idyllic tale is the following beautiful episode :

"Wolff left Bamberg without saying one word, and without a single farthing in his pocket, and travelled towards Wurtzburg. On his way, in a field he found a shepherd, who was a Roman Catholic, and he asked him if he might stay in his house for the night? The shepherd replied, 'Yes, my friend,' and brought him to his cottage. He then asked Wolff if he was a Roman Catholic? Wolff replied by giving him an account of his history; and after they had partaken of a frugal meal, the amiable shepherd knelt down with his family to pray the rosary; but previous to their commencing the prayer, the shepherd said, 'Let us pray five Ave Marias and one Paternoster for the good of the soul of this poor Jew, that the Lord may guide him to His fold.' They prayed five Ave Marias and one Paternoster, and in the morning, before Wolff left, the shepherd said to him, 'Friend, you are in distress; allow me to share with you what I have got. I will give you two florins, which will carry you well to Frankfort.'

Thus Providence and tender charity helped the wandering child. He taught Hebrew for a short time in Frankfort, and then in Halle; and after many other adventures, passing amidst infidel Jews and ra tionalist Protestants, and through Weimar, where he came under the shadow of Goethe and his brilliant company, came at last to Christian baptism and to the Catholic world

at Vienna, of which he gives an interesting account.

Out of the domestic heart of Judaism he leads us into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, not to gaze outside upon that wonderful hierarchy, as most Protestants do, but to behold its internal factions and divisions, and the thoughtful mind working out under its conditions, as under those of every other Christian corporation, the great problems of religion and life.

The world is full of observers whose capacity enables them to comprehend differences it is a common gift with superficial persons of all kinds, and in every field of inquiry. To perceive the perennial never-failing agreements and accordances is an altogether different matter. When the Protestant foreigner suddenly finds himself in the incense - laden atmosphere of Rome-when he sees the twinkling altar lights interposing between him and the day, and perceives the gleam of mystical vestments and crosses through the darkened airit is not wonderful that he takes up with that general notion, and, hurriedly retreating from the scarlet presence, concludes in his startled mind that here is still the one tremendous unity, against which free thought and private judgment made the most memorable outbreak that has happened in the history of man. It is difficult to contemplate the Church of Rome under any other than this aspect of unity. To know that people dare think there that parties rise there as readily as in other communities that fierce polemics, fierce as if the disputants were in the fullest exercise of private judgment, flourish within that all-enclosing silent wall of separation, with its pretences of infallibility strangely disturbs our preconceived notions. We all know, but do not remember, what halfrevealed convulsions were of old within the bosom of the universal mother; and to find perennial Protestantism and Evangelism swelling within that obdurate old breast,

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holding ground from generation to generation, descending by the ordinary laws of spiritual inheritance in irregular but never-failing lines of succession, maintaining a perpetual protest, never silenced, and rarely interrupted, for the fundamental truths of Christianity, in opposition to all errors and innovations, is very startling and wonderful to the ordinary Protestant reader. That such is the case, nevertheless, all students must be aware. history of the Protest within the Church of Rome-of those Christians of the Creed who, by some extraordinary capacity of human nature, which is among its deepest mysteries, say their Ave Marias without a suspicion of idolatry, and worship amid a multitude of saints the one Mediator only—would be one of the most remarkable of histories. Popular inclinations at present turn to the other side of the question, and Giant Pope has not lost his terrors for the English imagination at least. But it is confounding to those good orthodox notions of antichrist, in which most of us have been brought up, to recognise that indisputable element of Christian and Protestant life, which keeps its ground perpetually in the very bosom of the Church of Rome.

When Wolff went to Vienna, all wistful, young, and open-eyed, happily without any prejudices to one or the other side of the great army of Christendom, it was his fortune to fall between the two always struggling and contending divisions of the Church. He found there, as he might have found in the English capital, a High-Church party, a Neologist party, a Protestant, and a Popular. The leaders of the Catholic Protestants were "Johannes Michael Sailer, the Fenelon of Germany, and the great Frederick Leopold, Count of Stolberg. These united strict orthodoxy and attachment to the Papal power with admiration for antiquity and the Fathers, firm adherence to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, and

belief in the miracles of that Church, with rejection of what is called 'pious opinion.' As, for instance, they rejected not only the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, but denied the necessity of asking the intercession of the Virgin or of saints, and their minds revolted at the notion of worship being addressed to any but the Most High." The Popular party was there, as everywhere, the romantic-fervid, the passionate-devout, moved as everywhere by a popular preacher of striking character, profound piety, and primitive life; but characteristically distinct so far from the English model of a popular preacher, that the Redemptorist leader added to the love of God that almost secular warmth of devotion towards the Blessed Mary, which has formed a singular compromise between earthly and spiritual love in many a monkish bosom. These antagonist elements confronted, combated, and modified each other in the German capital. Hoff bauer, the Popular leader, medieval and ultramontane, mingled the gospel with the most devout and absurd of traditions, and scorned the very philosophers who admired and followed him; and Stolberg, the enlightened Protestant Catholic, when a sermon was read to him in which the faithful were adjured to pray to the Lord Jesus and to Mary, thundered out, " Blasphemy! this is not the teaching of the Church." Such a voice out of the very bosom of Popery is startling. The two parties were at active warfare, as if they had been parties in the English or any other Church; both of them enjoying equal liberty and advantages, even in a capital where concordats had reigned, and were again to reign; and neither the Inquisition nor any milder form of persecution seems to have threatened the leaders of this division of the Church, who were all devout Catholics, and maintained their doctrine to be no reform, but the veritable creed. Among such people the Jew-boy

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became anything but a Papist. He records his own youthful gaucheries and levities with the raciest nonchalance. The avowal of his nation sent a whole town into hysterics on one occasion; and the perfect frankness with which he professed, or claims to have professed, his sentiments on all subjects, seems to have had a piquancy and relish which delighted rather than horrified his strangely diverse entertainFor everybody delighted in the charming young man. From the innocent vagabondage of his student life, the friendless and moneyless lad came aloft with a spring into the best society. To see and to embrace him were almost the same thing throughout his all-fascinating career. Without any visible interval he comes from the Hebrew teaching, by which he kept life and learning in him, to the intimate friendship of Friedrich Schlegel, of Count Stolberg, and of half the great people of Vienna. Everybody furthered and forwarded his aims; most people took him into their confidence; he received support and encouragement while he stayed, and, when he went away, sheafs of introductory letters, which made his path familiar ground. Making allowances for that vanity which our hero confesses, this is less unbelievable than might be supposed at the first glance. The young Jew was no shy genius, sensitive on the subject of his own claims to regard, but a most straightforward, light-hearted, self-confident mortal, aware of his own agreeabilities, and happily incredulous that anybody could resist them. His manner of conciliating the affections of Pope Pius VII., when introduced to him, is amusingly characteristic, and explanatory of his social progress. When the old Pope and the young student had both done all that was proper, and the Pontiff had even expressed gracious intentions towards the wandering Hebrew, our hero suffered his affectionate feelings to get the better of him. He was charmed with the mild counte