dissolution of political government, the Jews had spontaneously offered money to the state to prevent embarrassment. Luzzatto also defended the Jews against attacks on the religious side, but on this point his exposition is not original. If he brought out the bright traits of his Jewish contemporaries, he by no means passed over their dark ones in silence, and that redounds to his credit. Luzzatto depicted them in the following manner. However different may be the manner of Venetian Jews from their brethren in Constantinople, Damascus, Germany, or Poland, they all have something in common:-- "It is a nation of timid and unmanly disposition, at present incapable of political government, occupied only with its separate interests, and caring little about the public welfare. The economy of the Jews borders on avarice; they are admirers of antiquity, and have no eye for the present course of things. Many are uneducated, without taste for learning or the knowledge of languages, and, in following the laws of their religion, they exaggerate to the most painful degree. But they have also noteworthy peculiarities--firmness and endurance in their religion, uniformity of doctrinal teaching in the long course of more than fifteen centuries since the dispersion; wonderful steadfastness, which leads them, if not to go into dangers, yet to endure the severest suffering. They possess knowledge of Holy Scripture and its exposition, gentleness and hospitality to the members of their race--the Persian Jew in some degree suffers the wrongs of the Italian--strict abstinence from carnal offenses, extraordinary carefulness to keep the family unspotted, and skill in managing difficult matters. They are submissive and yielding to everyone, only not to their brethren in religion. The failings of the Jews have rather the character of cowardice and meanness than of cruelty and atrocity." What Luzzatto's position was with regard to the Talmud he did not distinctly state, but only explained generally that there are three or four classes of Jews: Talmudists or Rabbanites, who hold the oral law of equal authority with the Bible; secondly, a philosophical and cultured class; and, lastly, Kabbalists, and Karaites. Yet he intimated that he held the Talmudical tradition to be true; whilst he considered the Kabbala as not of Jewish, but of Platonic, Pythagorean, and Gnostic origin. One of his disciples relates of him that he ridiculed the Kabbalists, and thought their theory had no claim to the title of tradition; it was wanting in the Holy Spirit.