No handicraft could be followed by a slave, and none but a freeman could learn a trade. Some trades were indeed less eminent than others--to wit, the art of a tanner was condemned as noisome; the arts of a barber, a weaver, a fuller, a perfumer, were all considered mean; and no man following these crafts could be allowed on any pretence to serve in the sacred office. A tanner, like Jose of Sephoris, might become a rabbi; he could never be made high priest. Not so with the craft of carpenter--a craft which had a part of its functions in the synagogue and Temple, which was often adopted as a profession by men of noble birth, and which enjoyed the same sort of repute among the Jews that is given in England to the Church, the Army, and the Bar. THE PHARISAIC NICETIES. The Pharisees were so rigid that, according to Buxtorf ("Syn. Judaica"), if an ox or other animal fell into a pit, it was deemed lawful to draw it out only when leaving it till Sabbath would involve risk to life. When delay was not dangerous, the rule was to give the beast food sufficient for the day; and if there were water in the bottom of the pit, to place straw and bolsters below it that it might not be drowned. The same author states that it was a breach of the law to let a cock wear a piece of ribbon round its leg on Sabbath, for it was making it bear something. It was also forbidden to walk through a stream on stilts, because, though the stilts appear to bear you, you really carry the stilts. While scrupulously observing the law which prohibited the cooking of food on Sabbath, they did not by any means make the holy day a day of fasting. THE SIEGES OF JERUSALEM. From the time Pompey (63 B.C.) captured Jerusalem and subjected the country to the Roman yoke, the Jews were always on the verge of insurrection. In 65 A.D., when Florus the Roman procurator robbed the sacred treasury, and brought on an insurrection, Bernice, the wife of Agrippa, rushed with bare feet through the streets to intercede with Florus; but it was in vain. In 69 A.D. Titus approached and besieged the city, starved out the inhabitants, and destroyed the Temple. Many Jewish captives were afterwards carried to Rome to swell the triumph of Titus, and were thrown to the wild beasts or forced to kill one another. The triumphal arch of Titus, erected soon after his death, remains to this day in Rome. From that date the Jews ceased to be a nation, and were dispersed over the world. There are no clear accounts of what became of the Apostles after the fall of Jerusalem. Some say that they arranged to go into different regions, as Scythia, Asia, Parthia, India. Those writers who profess to give later accounts of the Apostles flourished only in the third or fourth century. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM IN 70.