Far be from me to deny that there is an amiable and humane side to this convention. For my part, I prefer to moderate my judgments while the man is still alive. I do not admire over much those who bespatter another with abuse in his lifetime, and with flattery in the moment of his death. But the world thinks differently. Herzberg sinned against this convention; he wrote severely, even bitterly, and also unjustly, of an Anglo-Jewish worthy soon after the interment of the latter. And so he lost his friends, and was ostracized here for the rest of his own life. He resigned his post as Director of the Jerusalem Orphanage--though probably for other reasons. He died in Brussels in 1898. The incident alluded to in these preceding lines was typical of the man’s nature. He was not easy to get on with. He was not so much quarrelsome as aggressive. Witty, keen-minded, he was above all a man of impulsive emotions. He never defended a cause; he always attacked its opponents. If his fortress were besieged, he answered with a sortie; he could not fight behind the walls. And this is true of the wonderful book which, under the pen-name of “Gustav Meinhardt,” he first published in Hamburg in 1868, calling it _Jüdische Familienpapiere_. It is the most brilliant vindication of Judaism published in the nineteenth century. But it is an attack on rival systems more than a mere apology for his own religion. The author throughout is plaintiff rather than defendant. The book consists of a series of letters written from Germany to England. The author of the letters is a youth, Samuel; the recipient of them is an Englishman of means, Samuel’s adoptive father. A Jew by birth, Samuel has been brought up in England as a Christian by the kind-hearted aristocrat, who found the child destitute after the death of his real father, a poor hawker. And now he is sent home to his Jewish relatives on a mission--he is to convert them to his new faith. The letters describe Samuel’s arrival in the abode of his uncle, Rabbi Nathan, and with exquisite charm unfold the gradual reversion of Samuel to his ancestral allegiance. This part of the book is certainly constructive enough. Samuel is overwhelmed with his discoveries. He is fascinated by Rabbi Nathan, and also by his cousin, Rachel. I think it would be difficult to find in literature a more beautiful description of Jewish home-life than Herzberg presents. No wonder that in the end the would-be converter becomes the converted.