On the wings of fancy let us return to our castle on the Saale. After the lapse of many years, the procession of poets again wends its way in the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song. Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked hat, the badge of the mediæval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance looks into a distant future. Süsskind von Trimberg, to thee our greeting! HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY One of the most remarkable discoveries of the last ten years is that made in Paris by M. Ernest Renan. He maintains as the result of scientific research that the Semitic races, consequently also the Jews, are lacking in humor, in the capacity for laughter. The justice of the reproach might be denied outright, but a statement enunciated with so much scientific assurance involuntarily prompts questioning and investigation. In such cases the Jews invariably resort to their first text-book, the Bible, whose pages seem to sustain M. Renan. In the Bible laughing is mentioned only twice, when the angel promises a son to Sarah, and again in the history of Samson, judge in Israel, who used foxes' tails as weapons against the Philistines. These are the only passages in which the Bible departs from its serious tone. But classical antiquity was equally ignorant of humor as a distinct branch of art, as a peculiar attitude of the mind towards the problems of life. Aristophanes lived and could have written only in the days when Athenian institutions began to decay. It is personal discomfort and the trials and harassments of life that drive men to the ever serene, pure regions of humor for balm and healing. Fun and comedy men have at all times understood--the history of Samson contains the germs of a mock-heroic poem--while it was impossible for humor, genuine humor, to find appreciation in the youth of mankind.