He, at any rate, had good reason to grow content in his degree, for he was destined to make an epoch in the ‘Heroic History,’ instead of being, as he ‘wished he were,’ the reciter, and probably the prosy reciter, of several. Certain it is that, great scholar, successful preacher, and voluminous writer as was Manasseh ben Israel, it was not till he was fifty years old that he found his real vocation. He had felt at it for years, his books were more or less blind gropings after it, his friendships with the eminent and highly placed personages of his time were all unconscious means to a conscious end, and his very character was a factor in his gradually formed purpose. His whole life had been an upholding of the ‘standard’; publicists who sneered at the ostentatious rich Jew, priests who railed at the degraded poor Jew, were each bound to recognise in Manasseh ben Israel a Jew of another type: one poor yet self-respecting, sought after yet unostentatious, conservative yet cosmopolitan, learned yet undogmatic. They might question if this Amsterdam Rabbi were _sui generis_, but they were at least willing to find out if he were in essentials what he claimed to be, fairly representative of the fairly treated members of his race. So the ‘way was prepared’ by the ‘standard’ being raised. Which, of the many long-closed ‘gates,’ was to open for the people to pass through? Manasseh looked around on Europe. He sought a safe and secure resting-place for the tribe of wandering foot and weary heart, where, no longer weary and wandering, they might cease to be ‘tribal.’ He sought a place where ‘protection’ should not be given as a sordid bribe, nor conferred as a fickle favour, but claimed as an inalienable right, and shared in common with all law-abiding citizens. His thoughts turned for a while on Sweden, and there was some correspondence to that end with the young Queen Christina, but this failing, or falling through, his hopes were almost at once definitely directed towards England. It was a wise selection and a happy one, and the course of events, and the time and the temper of the people, seemed all upon his side. The faithless Stuart king had but lately expiated his hateful, harmful weakness on the scaffold, and sentiment was far as yet from setting the nimbus of saint and martyr on that handsome, treacherous head. The echoes of John Hampden’s brave voice seemed still vibrating in the air, and Englishmen, but freshly reminded of their rights, were growing keen and eager in the scenting out of wrongs; quick to discover, and fierce to redress evils which had long lain rooted and rotting, and unheeded. The pompous _insouciance_ of the first Stuart king, the frivolous _insouciance_ of the second, were now being resented in inevitable reaction. The court no longer led the fashion; the people had come to the front and were growing grimly, even grotesquely, in earnest. The very fashion of speaking seems to have changed with the new need for strong, terse