The most important measures of amelioration in the lot of the Jews in England were passed in 1723, when they acquired the right to possess land; in 1753, when parliament enacted the Naturalisation Bill; in 1830, when they were admitted to civic corporations; in 1833, when they were admitted to the profession of advocates; in 1845, when they were rendered eligible for the office of alderman and lord mayor; and in 1858, when the last and crowning triumph of the principle was achieved by the admission of Jews into parliament. In Asia, the Jews are still found in considerable numbers on the verge of the continent; in China, they are now found in one city alone, and possess only one synagogue. In Mesopotamia and Assyria the ancient seats of the Babylonian Jews are still occupied by 5,270 families. But England and Anglo-Saxon countries generally have been the most favourable to the race. Perhaps the most remarkable fact in the history of modern Judaism is the extension of the Jews in the United States. Writing in 1829, I stated, on the best authority then attainable, their numbers at 6,000. They are now [in 1863] reckoned at 75,000. * * * * * HERODOTUS History The "Father of History," as Herodotus has been styled, was born at Halicarnassus, the centre of a Greek colony in Asia Minor, between the years 490 and 480 B.C., and lived probably to sixty, dying about the year 425 B.C. A great part of his life was occupied with travels and investigations in those lands with which his history is mainly concerned. His work is the earliest essay in history in a European language. It is a record primarily of the causes and the course of the first great contest between East and West; and is a storehouse of curious and delightful traveller's gossip as well as a faithful record of events. The canons of evidence in his day were defective, for obvious reasons; a miscellaneous divine interposition in human affairs was taken for granted, and science had not yet reduced incredible marvels to ordinary natural phenomena. Nevertheless, Herodotus was a shrewd and careful critic, honest, and by no means remarkably credulous. If he had not acquired the conception of history as an exact science, he made it a particularly attractive form of literature, to which his simplicity of style gives a slight but pleasant archaic flavour. This epitome has been specially prepared far THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS from the Greek text. _I.--The Rise of Persian Power_