The Jews, in Ancient, Mediteval, and Modern Times. By James
K. Roamer. (Fisher Unwin.)—To write, as Professor Hosmer has attempted to do, a history of the Jews which shall be so colour. less as to offend neither the Christian nor the unbeliever, is a thankless, and perhaps unprofitable task. That which gives to the Jews their unique position among the nations, is what we are accustomed to regard as their Sacred History. That history, how- ever, is related in a few pages, while the bulk of the volume is devoted to the dreadful cruelties practised on the Jews in so-called Christian countries, to biographies of Spinoza, Mendelsohn, Montefiore, Heine, and other famous Jews, and to an account of the Rothschilds. The writer is graphic and descriptive, and some of his chapters are singularly attractive ; but Professor Hosmer loses all sense of pro- portion in his scrupulous endeavour to avoid pronouncing a definite judgment on the most wonderful of all histories. The work, it may be added, forms one of the series called " The Story of the Nations:.
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