Known to the many for her novels, Grace Aguilar is known to the few for her _Spirit of Judaism_. The book passed through a real adventure, quite as exciting as the fictional fortunes of any of her romantic heroes. Somewhat before 1840, Miss Aguilar wrote to Isaac Leeser, of Philadelphia. She had, in 1839, read the Rabbi’s first published sermons--his Bible was yet to come. She asked him “to undertake the editorial supervision of her manuscript work on the _Spirit_ of our religion.” Leeser courteously responded to the request. “I shall readily be believed,” he wrote in 1842, “that I felt truly happy that such a demand had been made upon me; and I accordingly offered my services to do as I was desired.” Miss Aguilar completed the book, but chance decreed that it was not to reach its goal. She sent it out to America “through a private channel,” and it never came to Leeser’s hands. Such a mishap did not thwart so ardent and industrious a girl--she was not much over twenty at the time. She accordingly proceeded to re-write it “from her original sketches,” made in 1837. On the second occasion fortune was more kind, though the book encountered some further delays before it appeared, in 1842, in America. A second edition--much inferior from the point of view of “get-up”--was published in 1849, again in Philadelphia. The second issue was No. xiii of the _Jewish Miscellany_ of the original Jewish Publication Society. The book was never printed in England. My own introduction to it was curiously made. Being deeply interested in the new plans for teaching Hebrew, I wrote (in 1903), a preface to a book on the Yellin method. I showed the proof of my essay to the late Rev. S. Singer, whereupon he remarked: “Grace Aguilar said much the same thing more than half a century ago.” And so, indeed, she did. She saw that Hebrew must be taught naturally, that the language must be made to “engage a child’s fancy,” by first of all introducing to it familiar Hebrew words from the child’s every-day life. Glad was I to find this anticipation of modern opinion, and I cited it fully. [Illustration: GRACE AGUILAR]