PROSPECTUS OF THE PHILO-HEBRAIC SOCIETY, For Promoting the Study of Hebrew Literature, AND ESPECIALLY FOR REPRINTING THOSE WORKS OF HEBREW WHICH HAVE NOW BECOME SCARCE AND RARELY TO BE MET WITH. * * * * * COMMITTEE. PRESIDENT――THE REV. THE PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. REVS. S. HINDS, D.D. | REVS. C. P. REICHEL. REVS. J. WEST, D.D. | REVS. T. CRADOCK. REVS. A. CAMPBELL. | REVS. M. RAINSFORD. REVS. M. MARGOLIOUTH. | DR. LITTON. REVS. G. H. CARROLL. | G. A. CRAWFORD, Esq. * * * * * THE Committee of the above Society beg leave to draw your attention to the reasons of its establishment, and solicit your co-operation with it. The beauties of Hebrew literature have been long and fully admitted by the few whose superior tastes have led them to explore its treasures, still, we regret to say, too little known. The necessary brevity of a Prospectus prevents the Committee saying much on the importance of a knowledge of that literature, especially to those who spend a great deal of their time in making themselves acquainted with the writings of the ancients. Suffice it to say, that those who have impartially studied the compositions of the Greeks, of the Romans, and of the Hebrews, have found the productions of the latter unrivalled either in beauty or elegance by those of the two former. It is a libel on the literary character of the Jews to say, that they confined themselves to the cultivation of one department of literature――a supposition which gave rise to the idea, that their literature is very scanty, and consists only of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.――The Jewish authors grace the literary pages of Spanish history as pre-eminent philosophers, philologists, physicians, astronomers, mathematicians, historians, grammarians, orators, and highly-gifted poets. The Committee have had the privilege of meeting many of the Hebrew race, highly distinguished in the above attainments, and the only education they received was a purely Hebrew one. The Jew spoke the truth when he affirmed, “That no nation in the universe can, during a continuous period of full five hundred years, produce a line of men so truly eminent, so universally learned, as can the Jews of Spain, from the year 980, until their expulsion from that kingdom in the year 1492.”――(_Heb. Review_, vol. ii., p. 39.)