which every foreign visitor of distinction and culture, irrespective of religion or nationality, deemed it an honour to be allowed to worship. Though faithful to the cult of his Hebrew fathers, Mendelssohn was deeply imbued with Hellenic thought and sense of beauty. His famous dialogue, _Phaedo, or the Immortality of the Soul_, might have been written by Plato, had Plato lived in the eighteenth century; so much so that an enthusiastic pastor and physiognomist of Zurich, enchanted by Mendelssohn’s masterpiece, declared that he saw the spirit of Socrates not only in every line of the book, but in every line of the author’s face. Like a present-day phrenologist, Lavater was anxious to obtain a model of Mendelssohn’s head as an advertisement for his science; but, being in addition a pious evangelical minister, he also nourished hopes of winning Mendelssohn over to the Christian faith. In both these objects of his ambition the well-meaning physiognomist was sadly disappointed. The great work of Mendelssohn’s life is the partial reconciliation which by his writings he assisted in effecting between the two worlds that had so long misjudged and mistrusted each other. His translation of the Pentateuch into pure German inaugurated for the Jews of Germany a new era of literary activity. By substituting modern German for the barbarous Yiddish in their education the book established an intellectual bond between them and their Christian fellow-countrymen. Lessing made the Jew known to the Gentile; Mendelssohn made the Gentile known to the Jew. And even the hostility of Frederick, the master of legions, the sneers of Voltaire, the master of laughter, and the bigotry of the Protestant public and of the Synagogue prevailed not against the united endeavours of the two apostles. In 1763 Mendelssohn carried off the prize offered by the Academy of Berlin for an essay on a philosophical subject, beating no less a competitor than Kant. In the same year Frederick, who three years before, enraged at some thinly-veiled disparagement of his verses by the Jewish critic, had been prevented from punishing him only by the fear of French ridicule, was induced to honour Mendelssohn by granting him the status of a Protected Jew.