nder the strokes of an autocratic tyranny, which the
presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching
strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came
from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of
high-flown Hebrew odes [1]--a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from
tuberculosis and _Weltschmerz_. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a
Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's _Aeneid_ [2] but soon
turned to Jewish _motifs_. In the musical rhymes of the "Songs of the
Daughter of Zion" (_Shire bat Zion_, Vilna, 1851), the author poured
forth the anguish of his suffering soul, which was torn between faith
and science, weighed down by the oppression from without and stirred to
its depth by the tragedy of his homeless nation. [3] A cruel disease cut
short the poet's life in 1852, at the age of twenty-four. A small
collection of lyrical poems, published after his death under the title
_Kinnor bat Zion_ ("The Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), exhibited even
more brilliantly the wealth of creative energy which was hidden in the
soul of this prematurely cut-off youth, who on the brink of the grave
sang so touchingly of love, beauty, and the pure joys of life.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 134 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: It was made from the German translation of Schiller]

[Footnote 3: See the poems "Solomon and Koheleth," "Jael and Sisera,"
and "Judah ha-Levi."]

A year after the death of our poet, in 1853, there appeared in the same
capital of Lithuania the historic novel _Ahabat Zion_ ("Love of Zion").
Its author, Abraham Mapu of Kovno (1808-1867), was a poor melammed who
had by his own endeavors and without the help of a teacher raised
himself to the level of a modern Hebrew pedagogue. He lived in two
worlds, in the valley of tears, such as the ghetto presented during the
reign of Nicholas, and in the radiant recollections of the far-off
biblical past. The inspired dreamer, while strolling on the banks of the
Niemen, among the hills which skirt the city of Kovno, was picturing to
himself the luminous dawn of the Jewish nation. He published these
radiant descriptions of ancient Judaea in the dismal year of the
"captured recruits." [1] The youths of the ghetto, who had been poring
over talmudic folios, fell eagerly upon this little book which breathed
the perfumes of Sharon and Carmel. They read it in secret--to read a
novel openly was not a safe thing in t