re existed a visible centre of their nation, the source, as it were,
to which they might repair to draw the waters of political life. But the
dispersions of the Jews seemed the more irremediable as the destruction
of their central home was complete.

To preserve the existence of their nation one other way presented
itself. In their sacred books they retained a common bond of law and
doctrine, such as no other people could boast. In these venerated
records they possessed, whether on the Tiber or the Euphrates, an elixir
of unrivalled virtue. With a sudden revulsion of feeling the popular
orators and captains betook themselves to the study of law, its history
and antiquities, its actual text and its inner meaning. The schools of
Tiberias resounded with debate on the rival principles of
interpretation, the ancient and the modern, the stricter and the laxer,
known respectively by the names of their teachers, Schammai and Hillel.

The doctors decided in favor of the more accommodating system, by which
the stern exclusiveness of the original letter was extenuated, and the
law of the rude tribes of Palestine moulded to the varied taste and
temper of a cosmopolitan society, while the text itself was embalmed in
the _Masora_, an elaborate system of punctuation and notation, to every
particle of which, to insure its uncorrupted preservation, a mystical
significance was attached. By this curious contrivance the letter of the
Law, the charter of Judaism, was sanctified forever, while its spirit
was remodelled to the exigencies of the present or the future, till it
would have been no longer recognized by its authors, or even by very
recent disciples. To this new learning of traditions and glosses the
ardent youth of the nation devoted itself with a fanaticism not less
vehement than that which had fought and bled half a century before. The
name of the rabbi Akiba is preserved as a type of the hierophant of
restored Judaism.

The stories depicting him are best expounded as myths and figures. He
reached, it was said, the age of a hundred and twenty years, the period
assigned in the sacred records to his prototype, the law-giver Moses.

Like David, in his youth he kept sheep on the mountains; like Jacob, he
served a master, a rich citizen of Jerusalem, for Jerusalem in his youth
was still standing. His master's daughter cast the eyes of affection
upon him and offered him a secret marriage; but this damsel was no other
than Jerusalem