have themselves brought about these divisions for their greater glory and profit. And I weep the more over this spoliation of my Chassidim, because there is so much perverted goodness among them, so much self-sacrifice for one another in distress, and such faithful obedience to the Zaddik, who everywhere monopolizes the service and the worship which should be given to God. Alas! that a movement which began with such pure aspiration, which was to the souls of me and so many other young students as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that a doctrine which opened out to young Israel such spiritual vistas and transcendent splendors of the Godhead, should end in such delusions and distortions. Woe is me! Is it always to be thus with Israel? Are we to struggle out of one slough only to sink into another? But these doubts dishonor the Master. Let me be humbler in judging others, cheerfuller in looking out upon the future, more enkindling towards the young men who are growing up around me, and who may yet pass on the torch of the Master. For them let me recall the many souls he touched to purer flame; let me tell them of those who gave up posts and dignities to spread his gospel and endured hunger and scorn. And let me not forget to mention Rabbi Lemuel, the lover of justice, who once when his wife set out for the Judgment House in a cause against her maidservant set out with her too. "I need you not to speak for me," she said, in ill-humor; "I can plead my own cause." "Nay, it is not for thee I go to speak," he answered mildly; "it is the cause of thy servant I go to plead--she who hath none to defend her." And, bursting into tears, he repeated the verse of Job: "If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me, what shall I do when God riseth up?" These and many such things, both of learned men and of simple, I hope yet to chronicle for the youths of Israel. But above all let the memory of the Master himself be to them a melody and a blessing: he whose life taught me to understand that the greatest man is not he who dwells in the purple, amid palaces and courtiers, hedged and guarded, and magnified by illusive pomp, but he who, talking cheerfully with his fellows in the market-place, humble as though he were unworshipped, and poor as though he were unregarded, is divinely enkindled, so that a light shines from him whereby men recognize the visible presence of God. MAIMON THE FOOL AND NATHAN THE WISE I Happy burghers of Berlin in their Sunday best trooped through the Rosenthaler gate in the cool of the August evening for their customary stroll in the environs: few escaped noticing the recumbent ragged figure of a young man, with a long dirty beard, wailing and writhing uncouthly just outside the gate: fewer inquired what ailed him.