But it is not always stories of this heroic nature that the MSS. tell us. They betray also very much of the instability of human affairs and their weakness. You find in many copies the words that they must not “be sold or given in mortgage.” But scarcely a generation has passed away, and they are already in the possession of a new owner, who writes the same injunction to be broken again by his children in their turn. In Codex 27,122, we find commendatory letters for a worthy poor man, who is so unhappy as to have two grown‐up daughters, and not to have the means of supplying them with marriage portions. Indeed, he must have been very poor, not possessing even a book in his house, or else his troubles could not have been so great. For in Codex Harl. 5702, we find the owner saying: “To eternal memory that I have acquired this _Third Book of Avicena_ from the hands of my father‐in‐law, R. Jekuthiel, as a part of my dowry.” As a sign of human weakness I give the following two instances. There lies before me a cabbalistic Codex (Add. 27,199), which acquired some notoriety from the fact of its having been copied by the famous grammarian, R. Elijah Levita, for his pupil Cardinal Aegidius. At the end of this MS. we read: “I (Levita) have finished (the copying of) this book on Wednesday, the day of Hoshana Rabba,(224) 5277 (1516), on which day I have seen my head in the shadow of the moon. Praised be God (for it), for now I am sure not to die in the following year.” These words relate to a well‐known superstition, according to which, when a man is going to die in the course of the next year his shadow disappears from him on the preceding Hoshana Rabba. But is it not humiliating to see that the great Levita, who was superior to many prejudices of his time, and taught Christians Hebrew, and who denied the antiquity of the vowels in the Bible, which was considered by the great majority of his contemporaries as a mortal heresy—is it not humiliating to see this enlightened man trembling for his life on this night, and anxiously observing his shadow? Another Codex lies before me (Add. 17,053), containing the Novellæ to three tractates of the Talmud. Its owner must accordingly have been a learned man. But in the fly‐leaf of this MS. we read the following words: “Memorandum—Thursday, the 25th of Sivan, 5295 (1535), I have taken an oath in the presence of R. David Ibn Shushan and R. Moses de Castro, etc., not to play (cards) any more.” I might perhaps suggest on this occasion that in our days when all sorts of Judaisms are circulating, a cooking Judaism, a racing Judaism, a muscular Judaism, and so many Judaisms more—it would be interesting to take up also the subject of playing Judaism, and to write its history.