THE RETURN. FROM GOETHE FAREWELL, dear sheiling, lone and low, The branches of the trees, The birches breathe the breath of love On the caressing breeze. O lovely summer moon! what coolness! What stillness here, to feel the fulness Thine, thine the glory of the night, I grudge thee not a score as bright, THE JEWS OF WORMS IN THE YEAR 1348. In the year 1348, as the crusaders were returning from the east, sore with defeat and discomfitures, the Jews were in many instances the victims on which they wreaked the vengeance of their sulky mood, and more especially in Germany, where the Jews were more numerous and more wealthy (as, with one exception, they still are) than in any other country of Christendom. Worms was then inhabited in a great proportion by Jews; and the magistrates, sensible of the advantages the city derived from their industry and riches, were exceedingly anxious to protect them as far as they could. They tried, accordingly, a variety of plans; they got a rescript from the emperor, -they got a bull from the pope, they sent embassies to the leaders of the routed bands ;-still the evil remained unchecked, when, behold, there came a device into the sapient head of one of the commoncouncil, a rare device,-which was no sooner schemed than executed, and no sooner executed than attended with great success. It was as follows:-One of the magistrates had a private meeting with one of the principal rabbies of the city, and between them they concocted two ancient documents of a most interesting description. The first was an autograph letter from the chief priest, Caiaphas, to the Sanhedrim of Worms, (his contemporaries,) asking their advice what course ought to be followed in regard to " the false prophet of Nazareth;" the second, an official copy of the Sanhedrim's answer, the scope and tenour of which was, that "Jesus of Nazareth ought to be spared until some evil deed had been proved against him." These letters being produced on parchment of the most venerable hue, and accompanied with translations into Latin, German, and French, authenticated by the signatures of the magistracy and clergy (who probably were let into the secret) of Worms, were received by the uncritical spirit of that age with a wonderful measure of admiration; and not only did the crusaders thenceforth spare the descendants of those all but Christian Hebrews, who wished to save the Saviour, but, for a long time afterwards, the Jews of Worms were really considered and treated, all over Germany, as of a better breed than the other Israelites; whence the proverbial saying, not yet altogether exploded, "Wörmser Juden, fromme Juden;" "Jew of Worms, no man harms ;" and the perhaps still more remarkable fact, that, from many old documents quoted by Mr Büsching, (from whom we borrow our story,) the established style of the proclamations of the Wörmser magistrates appears, during at least two ages, to have been " unto all our dear citizens, Jews and Christians, greeting.""Unsere lieben Bürger Juden und Christen," &c. The Jews of the neighbouring German towns did not witness all this without endeavouring to profit by some expedients of the same kind. The rabbies of Ulm put forth a little book, to shew that their colony also had left Palestine long before the time of our Saviour; and a series of letters from the authorities of Jerusalem, in one of which was given a full narrative of the life and death of Jesus, evidently addressed to people who knew nothing of his history previously. The Jews of Ratisbonne, in like manner, produced their proofs, that they were the descendants of some of the ten tribes scattered over the world at the time of the Babylonian captivity; one of their proofs being " a fragment of one of the stone tables which Moses broke at the foot of Mount Sinai." This fragment was, at a subsequent period, (1529, when the Jews were banished from that city,) taken possession of by a monastery, and laid up, (notwithstanding its suspicious history,) among its most precious relics, where it probably remains to this day. But there is no reason to believe that the Jews, either of Ulm or of Ratisbonne, profited personally by their imitation (which was, to be sure, rather too close to be well imagined) of the pious fraud of the Wormsers. We never heard of their being made an exception to any of the bitter proverbs by which the Germans have chosen to express their notion of the Jewish sojourners among them,—such as That is "Kommt der Fuchs zur haide "Comes the fox to his cover, The Jew to his oath, Their peril is over, Full free be they both," &c. MARCO BOZZARIS.* [The Epaminondas of Modern Greece. He fell in a night attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were, "To die for liberty is a pleasure and not a pain.] AT midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, In dreams, through camp and court, he bore In dreams his song of triumph heard. Then pressed that monarch's throne-a King; At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood Originally published in the New Times. |