_Baron_: O, you wrong me! How could you entertain such a suspicion? Without being learned in physiognomies, I must tell you I have never met with a more frank, generous, and pleasing countenance than yours. _Traveller_: To tell you the truth, I do not approve of generalizations concerning a whole people.... I should think that among all nations good and wicked are to be found. These quotations will suffice to convey an idea of the aim of the dramatist and of the manner in which it is carried out. There is a certain amount of comic relief to the gravity of the main plot. The foot-pad and garroter, Martin Krumm, cuts an amusing figure as an assailant of the honesty of the Jews. “A Christian would have given me a kick in the ribs and not a snuff-box,” says Christopher, the traveller’s servant. Christopher is a funny rogue. When his master cannot find him, and naturally complains, the servant replies: “I can only be in one place at one time. Is it my fault that you did not go to that place? You say you have to search for me? Surely you’ll always find me where I am.” There were a few attempts prior to Lessing to present the Jew in a favorable light on the stage, as Sir Sidney Lee has shown. But between Shylock and Nathan there stretches a lurid desert, broken only by the oasis of _Die Juden_. To some it may occur that the battle of tolerance fought by Lessing did not end in a permanent victory. Lessing himself would not have been disquieted at that result. As he expressed it, the search for truth rather than the possession of truth is the highest human good. A leading Viennese paper said some few years ago that if _Nathan the Wise_ had been written now, it would have been hissed off the German stage. It is not unlikely. Fortunately, Lessing wrote before 1880! _Nathan_ does not remain unacted. I saw Possart play the title-role in Munich in the nineties. His splendid elocution carried off Nathan’s long speeches with wonderful absence of monotony. A thing of truth is a boon forever, because it makes further progress in truth-seeking certain. Because there has been one Lessing, there _must_ be others. And if _Nathan the Wise_ be thus a lasting inspiration, let us not forget that the poet was trying his hand, and maturing his powers, by writing the play which has served as the subject of this sketch. ISAAC PINTO’S PRAYER-BOOK