wife, though a great-granddaughter of Abarbanel,[46] and bringing him delightfully patriotic memories as her portion, had brought him no solid dowry. And, of course, there were children to make the ideal of ‘plain living and high thinking’ somewhat of a practical puzzle. By 1640 Manasseh began to seriously face the necessity of turning to mercantile pursuits, and of emigrating to the Brazils. His congregation, which seems to have been a little slow to recognise his talents till the outer world pointed them out, and not very quick or very liberal in rewarding them even then, would have let him go, and only regretted him as a printer of prayer-books, but, luckily, two brothers named Pereira were wiser than the rest of the Amsterdam community. These brothers, who were wealthy men, came forward very liberally, endowed a college, and made Manasseh the head of it. Thus set free from pecuniary cares, Manasseh ben Israel, at the age of thirty-six, was able to give himself up to his books, and to his duties in the pulpit and at the schools. =2. His Writings and his Friends.=――The exceptional position which the Jews held in Holland gave to any distinguished member of their community a quite exceptional prominence. The Amsterdam Rabbi, as Manasseh ben Israel was called, came to be quite a celebrated personage. He was looked on as an encyclopædia of knowledge, and scholars of both sexes came from far and near to consult with him on learned subjects, and Hebrew came to be quite a fashionable study, even among Jews and Jewesses. There is no doubt that Manasseh’s character had as much to do with his popularity as his attainments. He was a thoroughly upright man, and most courteous in his manners. He was, moreover, never sparing of time or trouble when the results of his really wide and varied reading were in request. Grotius, the author of the ‘Law of Nations,’[47] Caspar Barlæus, who has been called the Virgil of his age, the whole of the learned family of Vossius, father and sons, all came to know and to esteem Manasseh, though neither one of them was naturally fond of Jews. And as Isaac Vossius was not only a distinguished scholar, but also chamberlain to Christina, Queen of Sweden, his friendship proved, by-and-by, a very useful one to Manasseh. Not useful in the vulgar sense of gaining for the Jewish Rabbi the right of rising in influential Christian society, but useful for the patriotic end, the טוֹב לְעַמּוֹ――the good of his people, which Manasseh, like Mordecai, was always seeking. Manasseh was no great author, as we have seen, yet even in his authorship he had a patriotic ideal. He was always meaning to write a ‘Heroic History,’ as he called it, by which he meant a history of the Jews, who were his heroes. He never did it, and possibly our libraries are not the poorer for the lack, whilst our lives are certainly the richer. For Manasseh was destined to make an altogether new chapter in Jewish history, instead of expending his energies in