most expressive piece of devotional music which the genius of man has ever consecrated to his Maker. Haydn also was remarkable for his deep sense of religion. When I was engaged in composing the Creation, he used to say, 'I felt myself so penetrated with religious feeling, that before I sat down to write, I earnestly prayed to God that he would enable me to praise him worthily.' It is related also of Handel, that he used to express the great delight which he felt in setting to music the most sublime passages of Holy Writ, and that the habitual study of the Scriptures had a strong influence upon his sentiments and conduct.

THE WANDERING JEW.

THERE is something so striking and impressive in the idea of a human creature being doomed to wander perpetually over the earth, restless and without hope of rest, deprived of the prospect of peace which the grave holds out to all other terrestrial beings fated to outlive every social tie, and to see generation after generation, of descendants it may be, passing away successively from before his eyes- there is something so striking in the idea of such a lot, that it is no wonder mankind should have had their interest strongly excited by the legend of the Wandering Jew, and that the subject should have been a favourite one with the lovers of poetry and romance. To fanaticism and imposture, the fiction has held out equal temptations. At various periods since the commencement of the Christian era, individuals have assumed the character of the Wandering Jew, and have succeeded in attracting notice, and gaining credence, to a greater or less extent, from their wondering contemporaries.

It is extremely probable that this legend had its origin in the words used by Christ to the Apostle Peter, on the

latter asking what would become of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. The answer was: 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?' In consequence of this expression, we are told, 'the saying went abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die?' Although it is expressly pointed out, in the remainder of the same passage, that the language of Christ could not properly bear any such meaning; yet the conclusion of 'the brethren, strangely modified and misapplied, seems to have been adopted by the primitive Christians, to have become intermingled with their traditions, and finally to have taken the form of the legend of the Wandering Jew. This, in its early or original shape, is detailed by Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, who flourished in the thirteenth century. The story was current before his day, in England and elsewhere, but he was probably the first who regularly chronicled all the particulars. In 1228, the monk informs us, an Armenian archbishop came to England, to visit the shrines and relics preserved in our churches. Being entertained at the monastery of St Albans, this ecclesiastical dignitary was anxiously interrogated as to the religious condition of his country, and, among other questions, a monk who sat near him inquired, 'if he had ever seen or heard of the famous person named Joseph, who was so much talked of, and who had been present at our Lord's crucifixion, and conversed with him, and who was still alive in confirmation of the Christian faith.' The archbishop answered, that the circumstances were all true;' and, afterwards, one of his train, interpreting the archbishop's words, told them in French that his lord knew the person they spoke of very well; that the latter had dined with his lord but a little while before they left the East; that the man had hiseen Pontius Pilate's porter, by name Cartaphilus, who, thaten they were dragging Jesus out of the door of the may ement Hall, struck him with his fist on the back, saypresent Go faster, Jesus; go faster: why dost thou linger?' live happich Jesus looked at him with a frown, and said: these sentinm going, but THOU SHALT TARRY TILL I COME!'

Soon after this event, Cartaphilus, by his own account, was converted, and baptised by the name of Joseph. He lives for ever; but at the end of every hundred years he falls into a severe illness, and ultimately into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he finds himself in the same state of youth which he was in when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years of age. He remembers all the circumstances attending the crucifixion and resurrection, the composing of the apostles' creed, their preaching and dispersion, and is himself a very grave and holy person.

Such is the story of the Wandering Jew, as told by Matthew Paris, who was alive at the time of the Armenian's visit to St Albans, and who, there can be no doubt, relates the circumstances as they came from the mouths of the strangers. The deception lay, it is probable, not with the Armenians, but with the party who had passed himself off upon them as the porter of Pontius Pilate, thereby insuring much good entertainment, doubtless, as well as unbounded reverence, from the followers of the church in the East. As Pythagoras, a very wise and clear-headed man, entertained the notion of his having personally gone through several existences on earth, so it is possible that the Wandering Jew of the Armenian archbishop may himself have laboured under a delusion. But the probability is on the other side; and the same conclusion may be drawn, without much uncharitableness, respecting the numerous persons who at later periods have personated the erratic Hebrew. There were considerable variations in the stories which these persons told of themselves. For example, one who appeared at Hamburg, about the year 1547, declared himself to have been a shoemaker in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion. A ballad, quoted by Bishop Percy from the Pepys Collection, details the particulars of this Hamburg impostor's narrative. The following verses give the main thread of the story :

'When as in faire Jerusalem

Our Saviour Christ did live,
And for the sins of all the worlde
His own dear life did give;

The wicked Jews with scoffes and scornes

Did daily him molest,

That never till he left his life,

Our Saviour could get rest.

When they had crowned his head with thornes,
And scourged him to disgrace,

In scornful sort they led him forthe

Unto his dying place:

His own dear cross he bore himselfe,
A burthen far too great,

Which made him in the street to faint,
With blood and water sweat.

Being wearye thus, he sought for rest,
To ease his burthened soule,

Upon a stone; the which a wretch
Did churlishly controul;

And sayd: "Awaye, thou king of Jews,
Thou shalt not rest thee here!

Pass on thy execution place,

Thou seest, nowe draweth neare."

And thereupon he thrust him thence;
At which our Saviour sayd:

"I sure will rest, but thou shalt walk,
And have no journey stayed."

From this hour forward, the ballad continues to say, this 'cursed shoemaker' could find no peace anywhere; and, finally, being brought to conviction by his own fate, became a convert and a witness for the religion of him who had pronounced his doom.

'He hath past through many a foreigne place,
Arabia, Egypt, Africa,

Greece, Syria, and great Thrace,
And throughout all Hungaria:

And lately in Bohemia,

With many a German towne ;

And now in Flanders, as 'tis thought,

He wandereth up and downe.

Where learned men with him conferre,
Of those his lingering dayes,

And wonder much to hear him tell
His journeyes and his wayes.'

All the alms given to him, the ballad further says, he gave to the poor, and no man ever saw laugh or smile upon his face.

The conferences with learned men mentioned in the

ballad are no fiction of the minstrel's brain, as we learn from the work called the Turkish Spy, where an account is given of the impression made on the Parisian savans by the appearance among them of another Wandering Jew. Though the plan of this work is fictitious, like that of the Citizen of the World, for example, yet the incidents narrated in it are in most instances real, and such is the case with the following story of the Wandering Jew, who figured in Paris about the year 1643:- Here is a man come to this city, if he may be called a man, who pretends to have lived about these sixteen hundred years. He says of himself, that he was usher of the divan (the Jews call it the Court of Judgment) in Jerusalem at the time when Jesus, the Christian Messias, was condemned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman president; that his name was Michob- Ader; and that, for thrusting Jesus out of the hall, with these words: "Go, why tarriest thou?" the Messias answered him again: "I go, but tarry thou till I come;" thereby condemning him to live till the day of judgment. Such was the account given by this personage of himself. He affected to heal diseases by a touch, and was deeply venerated both by the common people and others. One day,' says the Turkish Spy, 'I had the curiosity to discourse with him in several languages, and I found him master of all those that I could speak. He told me that there was scarce a true history to be found. He was in Rome, he said, when Nero set fire to the city, and saw him stand triumphing on the top of a hill to behold its flames. He saw Saladin's return from his conquest in the East, when he caused his shirt to be carried on the top of a spear with this proclamation: "Saladin, lord of many rich countries, shall have no memorial left of all his glories when he dies, but only this poor shirt!" He knew Tamerlane the Scythian, and told me that he was so called because he was lame. He seemed to pity the insupportable calamity of Bajazet, whom he had seen carried about in a cage by Tamerlane's order. He knew Mohammed's father very well, and had been often in his company at Ormus. He had heard the emperor