Under Philip III. of Spain there was a fresh outbreak of activity on the part of the Inquisition. In January 1605 an _auto-da-fé_ was held at Lisbon, in which 150 Jews and Jewesses literally walked ‘in the shadow of death,’ and were only set free from that fearful procession, at the last moment, on payment of an enormous fine. Their ransom money paid, these poor souls hastened to leave the land which bigotry had made intolerable to them, and, broken in health and ruined in fortune, they made for the friendly shores of Holland. Among these refugees was a certain Joseph ben Israel and his family, the youngest member of which was a year-old baby named Manasseh. Joseph ben Israel received the kindest of welcomes from his old friends, who were now no longer professing Catholics, but very earnestly practising Jews. The Rabbi of the Amsterdam congregation, Isaac Uziel, in due time became tutor to the little Manasseh, and by the year 1622, when Manasseh was barely eighteen, the office of Rabbi having become vacant through Uziel’s death, the appointment was given to the promising son of Joseph ben Israel. So, from the early age of eighteen, Manasseh preached and taught with great satisfaction to himself and his congregation, and to the benefit also of many learned Christian scholars, who, interested in the Jewish community in their midst, would often pay a visit to the synagogue or the school. It was an honoured and an honourable position which Manasseh held, but it was not a well-paid one, and, like the older Rabbis, Manasseh had to supplement head work by hand work. He set up a printing press, and in 1627 he issued a prayer-book, which prayer-book was the first Hebrew publication that ever appeared in Holland. Perhaps the opportunity of being able to publish whatever he might like to write had something to do with making an author of Manasseh, for, without any great original talent, he became a prolific writer. In 1632 he brought out a book called the ‘Conciliator,’ the object of which was to reconcile conflicting passages in the Pentateuch. There are no valuable independent ideas in the ‘Conciliator,’ and, perhaps, what it shows most clearly is how indefatigably Manasseh read before he began to write. There were five years spent on the composition or compilation of this work, and it contains quotations from, or references to, over two hundred Hebrew, and fifty Latin, Greek, and Spanish authors. It was written in Spanish, though it might as readily have been written in Hebrew or Latin or English, for Manasseh was a most accomplished linguist. The research of the book, and the industry and talent of the author, gained it fame. The ‘Conciliator’ was speedily translated into Latin and Italian, and attracted to Manasseh a great deal of complimentary attention from the scholars of the day. Money, however, was still lacking, and began to prove a somewhat serious difficulty, for Manasseh had married young, and his