=1. A Long Night.=――Whilst the Jews of Holland were growing in wealth and in importance, and the branch which Manasseh ben Israel had grafted on England was there, though slowly, attaining to a healthy and independent existence, the position of the Jews in the rest of Europe was still deplorable. The dawn was far, as yet, from rising on the Jews in Northern and Central Europe. In the south, in Italy, there was a sort of twilight; a comparatively peaceful and uneventful existence under the intermittently humane rule of the Popes. In Spain and Portugal, the Inquisition, we know, had ended in expulsion, and in France, the edict which banished the race from its shores in 1394 was still in operation. The state of things which, in the east, had ensured a welcome for a Sabbatai Zevi was at work in the west, and produced different, but, as we shall see, quite as harmful results. The standard was lowered throughout Europe. And yet, though deprived of the wealth, and glory, and position which they had so long enjoyed in the Peninsula, though in differing degrees oppressed and degraded in Germany and other countries, the Jews were still, though blindly, ‘toiling upward in the night,’ and taking their share in the slow progress of civilisation. ‘There is a Providence that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we may.’ Good results from sorrowful causes showed themselves often in unexpected ways and in unforeseen directions; for instance, the frequent theological disputations between Jews and Jews, and Christians and Christians, the very charges now and again brought against Jews and Jewish literature, turned the attention of Christian scholars to the study of Hebrew. Johann Reuchlin, one of the most important fore-runners of the German reformation, had a Hebrew teacher, one Jacob Loans, physician to the Emperor Frederic III. This Loans remained in favour with the Emperor, and also with his successor, Maximilian I., and it was probably owing to Jacob Loans’ influence that another member of the same family, Joseph Loans of Rosheim (born 1480, died 1555), was appointed as representative of the Jews at the Imperial Court. Joseph Loans defended his brethren whenever accusations were made against them, and became surety for them whenever that was required. The Jews called him their ‘great defender,’ though his efforts on their behalf were not always successful; the Emperor Maximilian being of a somewhat fickle turn of mind, and apt to take ‘full easily all impressions from below.’