The Persian Jews were as ill-content at having their tailors’ bills regulated by the Government as were those of the Peninsula. When the Persian Caliphs, who would allow nobody to be well-dressed but the faithful, closed the colleges at Babylon, and expelled the professors, it is said that nobody wept for the latter so much as the handicraftsmen who used to adorn their outward persons. Of these expelled professors, a corsair captured at sea Rabbi Moses, his handsome wife, and their son, Rabbi Hanoch. On their way to Cordova, some Tarquinian-like overtures were made to the lady, who, walking up to her husband, inquired if those drowned at sea would be resuscitated at the resurrection? The Rabbi smiled, and answered with the text:—“The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring again from the depths of the sea.” Thereupon the Hebrew Lucretia plunged into the waves, and her husband into a reverie, in which the calmly-pleasant abounded. The Jews of Cordova redeemed the other captives, and the first visit of Rabbi _père_ was to a tailor, of whom he ordered an outfit of sackcloth. The honest man was disgusted with his customer’s taste, and valued below cost-price a philosopher who declared that his logic was always more conclusive in sackcloth than in habits spun from finer webs. Attired in his new suit, he entered the Jewish college, where a learned dispute was being carried on with equal warmth and obtuseness. A few words from the mean stranger had an effect like the sun upon a fog, and the president quitting his chair, the man in sackcloth was voted into it by acclamation. The tailor, who had followed out of curiosity, ran to the captain of the corsair, and told him that his late captive was a rare man, of whose value he had been ignorant; and therewith the captain would fain have had the sale cancelled, but the Caliph of Cordova would not listen to such a proposition. Hanoch, the son of Moses, was even more fortunate than his sire, for he espoused a daughter of the House of Peliag. Hanoch displayed such liberality on the occurrence of this union, that for a long time the corporation of tailors, whom he especially benefited on this occasion, were accustomed to name one son in their respective families after so liberal a patron of the craft. The two Jewish households on that day were long celebrated at the hearths of those who made their dresses. The wedding feast was held at Zahara, near the city, and not less than seven hundred Israelites rode thither in costumes that would have dazzled the Incas. Ask a well-to-do Cordovese tailor as to the state of his vocation, and, if he has not now forgotten the once popular legend, he will answer, “It is almost as flourishing, Sir, as in the days of Hanoch, whom our predecessors cursed as a Jew, and blessed as a customer.” It was a neatly cut distinction, and fitted exactly.