My father had in his study a cupboard containing books. He had forbidden me indeed to read any books but the Talmud. This, however, was of no avail: as he was occupied the most of his time with household affairs, I took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded. Under the impulse of curiosity I made a raid upon the cupboard and glanced over all the books. The result was, that, as I had already a fair knowledge of Hebrew, I found more pleasure in some of these books than in the Talmud. And this result was surely natural. Take the subjects of the Talmud, which, with the exception of those relating to jurisprudence, are dry and mostly unintelligible to a child--the laws of sacrifice, of purification, of forbidden meats, of feasts, and so forth--in which the oddest rabbinical conceits are elaborated through many volumes with the finest dialectic, and the most absurd questions are discussed with the highest efforts of intellectual power; for example, how many white hairs may a red cow have, and yet remain a _red_ cow; what sorts of scabs require this or that sort of purification; whether a louse or a flea may be killed on the Sabbath,--the first being allowed, while the second is a deadly sin;--whether the slaughter of an animal ought to be executed at the neck or the tail; whether the highpriest put on his shirt or his hose first; whether the _Jabam_, that is, the brother of a man who died childless, being required by law to marry the widow, is relieved from his obligation if he falls off a roof and sticks in the mire. _Ohe jam satis est!_ Compare these glorious disputations, which are served up to young people and forced on them even to disgust, with history, in which natural events are related in an instructive and agreeable manner, with a knowledge of the world's structure, by which the outlook into nature is widened, and the vast whole is brought into a well-ordered system; surely my preference will be justified.