thy voice from weeping and thine eye from tears for thy work shall be rewarded and thy children shall come again to their own border.'" He forced her away into the inner apartments, and himself lay down on one of the cushions in the portico.

Helon did not attempt to sleep. Wishing his uncle calm repose, he ascended the roof of the house where stood the alija, a small apartment like a turret, dedicated to secret meditation and prayer. From the roof there was an extensive view over the city of Alexandria; on the north to the Mediterranean, on the south to the lake Mareotis, and on the east to the Nile and the Delta. Here he had often stood when a boy, and with restless longing had looked towards the Holy Land. It was a clear, calm night of spring. Refreshing odours arose from the surrounding gardens. The countless stars shed down their twinkling radiance upon him, and the moon's new light was mirrored in the lake and the canals of the Nile.

Before him lay the city of Alexander, justly styled in the days of her highest prosperity, the

Queen of the East and the Chief of Cities. In what stillness she now reposed, with her towering obelisks! How deep the silence and the rest which wrapt her 600,000 inhabitants, and her five harbours, by day so full of activity and noise! The house was near the Panium, from which the whole city could be seen at one view. There stood the Bruchium which, besides the royal palace, contained the Museum, rendered the chief seat of the learning of the times, by its library of 400,000 volumes, and by being the residence of the learned men, whom the munificence of the Ptolemies had collected around their court. Here Helon had sat for several years, at the feet of the philosophers. He thought on those years, and, as he compared them with his present hopes, he exclaimed :

Better is a day in thy courts than a thousand!

I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord Than dwell in the tents of sin.-Ps. lxxxiv. 10.

"Truly the tents of sin," said he to himself, as he paced the roof, "even when I think on my own people, who live here in high favour. Let them be called Macedonians if they will, let

the sons of the high priest be the commanders of the army, let them hope for still greater distinctions from Cleopatra's favour, it is still an exile and Israel is in affliction. Their schisms in doctrine and laxity of morals are too plain a proof of it.”

He went into the alija and brought out his harp; the plaintive tones resounded through the still air of night as he sung

By the rivers of Babel we sat and wept
When we thought on Zion.

We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

Ps. cxxxvii.

"Here we ought to hang them upon the pyramids," continued he. "The controversy which destroyed the harmony of our social meal this: evening still jars upon my soul. Praised be God, that Jeremiah sojourned with my forefathers, that they like myself have continued Aramæan Jews, and have not gone over to the Hellenists."

The Diaspora, or body of the Jews dispersed in foreign countries, was divided at this time into Hellenists and Aramæan Jews. The Hel

lenists had adopted the Greek, at that time the universal language of the civilized and literary world; the Aramæan Jews used, even in foreign lands, the Hebrew, or rather a dialect of that language, called the Aramæan, The latter attached themselves to the temple at Jerusalem, the former worshipped at Leontopolis in Egypt. A division once begun is easily extended to other points. With the Greek language the Hellenists had adopted Grecian culture, yet wished still to continue Jews, and hence arose the necessity for uniting philosophy with the law. The only way in which this could be accomplished, was that which they adopted, of attributing the doctrines of Grecian wisdom to the law, as its inward and spiritual meaning. In this undertaking the Egyptians had led the way for them. Egypt is the native country of allegories. For a long time past the popular religion had been very different from that of the sacerdotal caste, and they stood to each other in the relation of the letter to the spirit; of the image to the reality. The Hellenistic Jews had adopted this Egyptian

mode, and three classes had been formed amongst them. One party openly renounced both law and allegory, living without the law, which indeed it was impossible to observe exactly any where but in Judea. Another outwardly conformed to the law, but did so for the sake of its hidden and spiritual meaning. A third set were contented with this spiritual meaning, which they arbitrarily annexed to it, and concerned themselves no further with the literal observance. No little confusion had arisen from this variety of opinions, and the incessant controversies to which they gave rise.

Helon had been hurried by the prevailing spirit of his age and country for some years into the vortex of allegory. A youth of such an ardent temperament and high intellectual endowments, connected with the most considerable families of the Alexandrian Jews, could scarcely escape this temptation. Had his father been alive, he would have been a constant monitor to him against the danger-but since his death on the journey to the Holy Land, Helon's