For a while the efforts of the English Jews to obtain general rights of citizenship were abandoned, and their energy was steadily and steadfastly limited to the righting of one wrong in especial. The marriage law of England, which counted no marriage legal unless performed by a Christian priest, pressed very hardly on the Jews. It put difficulties not only in the way of happiness, but also of property, and made both insecure. Years, however, and patience and perseverance were needed to get this seemingly simple matter set right, and it was not till the reign of William IV. (1830) that an Act was passed which made properly solemnised Jewish marriages in all respects equal, in the eyes of the law, with properly solemnised Christian ones. =5. Communal Progress.=――Meanwhile, by marriage or by conversion, or by simple aloofness and indifference, some of the more weak and the more selfish members of the community every now and then slipped from under the many burdens which their Judaism imposed upon them. The brave majority straightway took up the neglected duties of these occasional deserters, and did a double portion of communal work and communal charity. Their synagogues and their institutions supplied to them their only possibilities of distinction. Possibly an honourable ambition to be ‘known in the gates’ may have combined with religious zeal to make office in the synagogue eagerly sought after. There were, at any rate, good men in plenty who, unlike Sampson Gideon, were content to use their brains and their wealth, not as stepping-stones for themselves, but as scaffolding for the community――men who carried out in the practical, everyday actions of their life the words לֹא לָנוּ יְיָ לֹא לָנוּ כִּי לְשִׁמְךָ תֵּן כָּבוֹד. And as Sampson Gideon served as an instance of the one sort, so Benjamin Mendes da Costa, a man who lived as befitted his wealth, and yet spent 3,000l. a year on ‘the poor of all creeds,’ and who was generally known as ‘the truly good Jew,’ may be taken as an example of the other. Da Costa died in 1764. Meanwhile, the synagogues and schools and institutions, both of the Sephardim and Ashkenazim, continued to flourish, and every now and again new ones were founded. The present Portuguese Board of Deputies, instituted to look after Jewish interests generally, held its first meeting and presented its first address, which was one of congratulation to George III. on his accession, at the close of the year 1760. In this proceeding the German congregations united, and from that date forward the two sections of Jews in England, the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, drew constantly closer to each other in every kindly feeling, and in all good works. The bond of brotherhood between European Jews was further cemented and extended by reason of the active correspondence which was maintained between the Jews of London and the older established committees on the Continent, and this