tion of their worth by
unprejudiced critics, who give particularly high praise to the new
species of tales, the Jewish village, or Ghetto, tales, with which
Jewish and German literatures have latterly been enriched. Their object
is to depict the religious customs in vogue among Jews of past
generations, their home-life, and the conflicts that arose when the old
Judaism came into contact with modern views of life. The master in the
art of telling these Ghetto tales is Leopold Kompert. Of his
disciples--for all coming after him may be considered such--A. Bernstein
described the Jews of Posen; K. E. Franzos and L. Herzberg-Fraenkel,
those of Poland; E. Kulke, the Moravian Jews; M. Goldschmied, the Dutch;
S. H. Mosenthal, the Hessian, and M. Lehmann, the South German. To
Berthold Auerbach's pioneer work this whole class of literature owes its
existence; and Heinrich Heine's fragment, _Rabbi von Bacharach_, a model
of its kind, puts him into this category of writers, too.

And so Judaism and Jewish literature are stepping into a new arena, on
which potent forces that may radically affect both are struggling with
each other. Is Jewish poetry on the point of dying out, or is it
destined to enjoy a resurrection? Who would be rash enough to prophesy
aught of a race whose entire past is a riddle, whose literature is a
question-mark? Of a race which for more than a thousand years has, like
its progenitor, been wrestling victoriously with gods and men?

To recapitulate: We have followed out the course of a literary
development, beginning in grey antiquity with biblical narratives,
assimilating Persian doctrines, Greek wisdom, and Roman law; later,
Arabic poetry and philosophy, and, finally, the whole of European
science in all its ramifications. The literature we have described has
contributed its share to every spiritual result achieved by humanity,
and is a still unexplored treasury of poetry and philosophy, of
experience and knowledge.

"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is never full," saith the
Preacher; so all spiritual currents flow together into the vast ocean of
a world-literature, never full, never complete, rejoicing in every
accession, reaching the climax of its might and majesty on that day
when, according to the prophet, "the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

THE TALMUD

In the whole range of the world's literatures there are few books with
so che