to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office, or to embroil me. "I am, your most humble and unfortunate servant,

"Is. NEWTON."

Locke's answer is admirable-full of right and amiable feeling towards his illustrious friend, and breathing the dignity, at the same time, of a person wholly unconscious of any offence.

"Oates, Oct. 5th. 93. "SIR-I have been, ever since I first knew you, so entirely and sincerely your friend, and thought you so much mine, that I could not have believed what you tell me of yourself, had I had it from any body else. And though I cannot but be mightily troubled that you should have had so many wrong and unjust thoughts of me, yet next to the return of good offices, such as from a sincere good-will I have ever done you, I receive your acknowledgement of the contrary as the kindest thing you could have done me, since it gives me hopes that I have not lost a friend I so much valued. After what your letter expresses, I shall not need to say anything to justify myself to you. I shall always think your own reflection on my carriage both to you and all mankind, will sufficiently do that. Instead of that, give me leave to assure you, that I am more ready to forgive you than you can be to desire it; and I do it so freely and fully, that I wish for nothing more than the opportunity to convince you that I truly love and esteem you; and that I have still the same good-will for you as if nothing of this had happened. To confirm this to you more fully, I should be glad to meet you any where, and the rather, because the conclusion of your letter makes me apprehend it would not be wholly useless to you. But whether you think it fit or not, I leave wholly to you. I shall always be ready to serve you to my utmost, in any way you shall like, and shall only need your commands or permission to do it. My book is going to press for a second edition; and though I can answer for the design with which I writ it, yet since you have so opportunely given me notice of what you have said of it, I should take it as a favour, if you would point out to me the places that gave occasion to that censure, that by explaining myself better, I may avoid being mistaken by others, or unawares doing the least prejudice to truth or virtue. I am sure you are so much a friend to them both, that were you none to me, I could expect this from you. But I cannot doubt but you would do a great deal more than this for my sake, who after all have all the concern of a friend for you, wish you extremely well, and am without compliment," &c.

The letter which this called forth from Newton, shows plainly the unhappy state in which he must then have been.

"The last winter, by sleeping too often by my fire, I got an ill habit of sleeping; and a distemper, which this summer has been epidemical, put me farther out of order, so that when I wrote to you, I had not slept an hour a night for a fortnight together, and for five nights together rot a wink. I remember I wrote to you, but what I said of your book I remember not. If you please to send me a transcript of that passage, I will give you an account of it, if I can."

These disclosures may, perhaps, serve to explain the otherwise remarkable fact of this illustrious person having completed all his discoveries before he attained the age of fortyfive, and done nothing after that, although he lived in perfect enjoyment of health forty years longer.

THE FALSE MESSIAH, SABBATHAI SEVI.+

IN 1666 the whole Jewish world, co-extensive almost with the globe itself, was raised to the highest degree of excitement by the intelligence of the appearance and rapid progress of a youth, who had appeared in Smyrna, and assumed the name and the authority of the Messiah. Sabbathai Sevi was the younger son of Mordechai Sevi, who first followed the mean trade of a poulterer at Smyrna, afterwards became broker to some English merchants. He was born in A. C. 1625. Sabbathai was sent to school, where he made such rapid progress in the Cabbala, that in his eighteenth year he was appointed a Hakim or Rabbi: he even then had many followers among the youth, and indeed among the elders, of the place, with whom he prac tised rigid fasts, and bathed perpetually in the sea. At twenty years old he married a woman of great beauty and rank among his people, but declined all conjugal connexion with her. The father cited him for this neglect of his duty: he was forced to give a bill of divorce. A second time he married; and a second time, on the same plea, the marriage was dissolved. Sabbathai announced that "the voice from heaven" assured him that neither of these were the meet and appointed partners of his life. His partisans asserted that he was actuated by a holy desire of triumphing over human passion: his enemies gave a different turn to the affair-still his

From the Family Library.-Vol. III.

fame increased. He sometimes fasted from Sabbath to Sabbath, and bathed till his life was endangered: yet his beauty, which was exquisite, seemed daily to increase. His whole body was said to breathe a delicious odour, which the physician of the family, suspecting to be perfume, declared, on examination, to be a natural exhalation from the skin. He now began to preach and announce himself openly as the Son of David; and had the boldness to utter, in proof of his divine mission, the ineffable name, Jehovah. The offended Rabbins, horror-struck at this double crime, declared him worthy of death, and denounced him before the Turkish tribunal. Sabbathai took refuge in Thessalonica. There the Rabbins again rose against him. He fled to Egypt; thence to Jerusalem. As he passed by Gaza, he made an important proselyte, named Nathan Benjamin, who, admitted trembling to his presence, declared, by the great Almighty and dreadful God, that he had seen the Lord in his cherub-borne chariot, as Ezekiel of old, with the ten Sephiroth, murmuring around him like the waves of the sea a voice came forth-"Your Redeemer is come; his name is Sabbathai Sevi; he shall go forth as a mighty one, inflamed with wrath as a warrior; he shall cry, he shall roar, he shall prevail against his enemies," Isaiah xliii. 13. In Jerusalem Sabbathai preached, and proclaimed himself

the Messiah with such success that the Rabbins trembled before him; and the Elias of the new sect, Nathan of Gaza, had the audacity to issue an address to the brethren of Israel, in which he declared, that before long the Messiah would reveal himself, and seize the crown from the head of the sultan, who would follow him like a slave. After residing thirteen years in Jerusalem, Sabbathai made a second expedition to Egypt, where he married again, by the account of his enemies, a woman of light character-by that of his partisans, a maiden designated as his bride by the most surprising miracles. She was the daughter of a Polish Jew, made captive by some marauding Muscovites. At eighteen years of age she was suddenly seized from her bed by the ghost of her dead father, set down in a burying-place of the Jews, where she was found-told her story, and declared that she was the appointed bride of the Messiah. She was sent to her brother in Amsterdam : thence to Egypt. After passing three years more in Jerusalem, Sabbathai went openly into the synagogue, and proclaimed himself the Messiah. A violent commotion took place; the Rabbins launched their interdict against him he fled to his native place, Sinyrna. There the ban pursued him, but the people received him with rapture. One Anakia, a Jew of high rank, denounced him on the Exchange as an impostor. The unbeliever returned to his home, fell from his

chair, and died. This singular accident was at once recognised as from the hand of God. The Rabbins feared to pursue their interdict -Sabbathai assumed a royal pomp ; a banner was borne before him, with the words"The right hand of the Lord is uplifted." He divided among his partisans the kingdoms of the earth: he named his two brothers Kings of Judah and Israel: he himself took the title of King of the Kings of the Earth. One man, of high rank, nearly lost his life for opposing the prevailing delusion. The head of the Rabbins was degraded: the vice-president openly espoused the party. The fame of Sabbathai spread throughout the world. In Poland, in Germany, in Hamburgh, and Amsterdam, the course of business was interrupted on the Exchange, by the gravest Jews breaking off to discuss this wonderful transaction. From Amsterdam inquiries were sent to their commercial agents in the Levant; they received the brief and emphatic answer, ""Tis he, and no other." In the mean time, rich presents were poured in to the court of Sabbathai, and embassies were sent from the different

communities of the Jews-some of these were detained three or four weeks before

they could obtain an audience. His picture was surmounted by a crown of gold; the twenty-first Psalm was sung before him, and which he was acknowledged as the Messiah. a public prayer offered in the synagogue, in ble words of Joel, prophets and prophetesses In all parts, as if to accomplish the memoramaidens, in Samaria, Adrianople, Thessaappeared-men and women, youths and lonica, Constantinople, and in other places, fell to the earth, or went raving about in prophetic raptures, exclaiming, it was said, in Hebrew, of which before they knew not a word, "Sabbathai Sevi is the true Messiah of the race of David; to him the crown and the kingdom are given." Even the daughters of his bitterest opponent, R. Pechina, were seized, as Sabbathai had predicted, with the same phrenzy, and burst out in rapturous acknowledgment of the Messiah in the Hebrew language, which they had never learned. One wealthy Israelite, of Constantinople, more cautious than the rest, apprehending that this frenzy would bring some dreadful persecution against the Jews, went to the grand vizier, and requested a certificate, that he had never been a believer in the Messiah. This reached the ears of the partisans of Sabbathai, they accused their crafty opponent of treasonable designs against the Turks, brought forward false witnesses, and the over-cautious unbeliever was sentenced to the galleys. Among the Persian Jews, the excitement was so great, that the husbandmen refused to labour in the fields. The governor, a man, it should seem, of unusual mildness, remonstrated with them for thus abandoning their work, instead

66

as

of endeavouring to pay their tribute. "Sir," they answered, with one voice, "we shall pay no more tribute, our deliverer is come." The governor bound them in an obligation, to which they readily acceded, to pay two hundred tomans, if the Messiah did not appear within three months. But Sabbathai had now advanced too far to recede-his partisans were clamorous for his passing over to Constantinople, to confront the grand seignior. He arrived, escorted by a vast number of his friends, and was received with the loudest acclamations by the Jews of Constantinople. The sultan was absent; he demanded an audience of the grand vizier. The vizier delayed, till he had received instructions from his master. The sultan sent orders that Sabbathai should be seized, and kept in safe custody. The grand vizier despatched an aga and some janissaries to the dwelling of Sabbathai, but the superstitious aga was so overawed by the appearance of Sabbathai, "bright," he said, an angel," that he returned, trembling and confounded, to his master. Another aga was sent, and returned in the same manner. Sabbathai, however, surrendered himself of his own accord; he was committed to the castle of Sestos, as a sort of honourable prison, where his partisans had free access to him. From thence he issued a manifesto, suspending the fast religiously kept on the 9th of August, on account of the destruction of Jerusalem, and ordered the day to be celebrated with the utmost festivity, as the birth-day of the Messiah, Sabbathai Sevi. In Sestos, he admitted a deputation from Poland into his presence, whom he astonished with his profound knowledge and ready application of the Cabbala. But there was in Constantinople one stubborn unbeliever, named Nehemiah, who for three days resisted all the arguments of the Messiah, and at the end openly proclaimed him an impostor. The partisans of Sabbathai rose in the utmost fury; and, when Sabbathai threatened his opponent with death, rushed forward to put his mandate in execution. The Rabbi burst out of the chamber, and fled, pursued by the adherents of Sabbathai-escape was hopeless, when he suddenly seized a turban from the head of a Turk, placed it on his own, and cried aloud, I am a Moslem-the Turks instantly took him under their protection, and he was sent to Adrianople to the sultan, who summoned Sabbathai to his presence. Sabbathai stood before the grand seignior; he was ignorant of Turkish, and a Jewish renegade was appointed as interpreter. But the man, before whom the awe-struck agas had trembled, now before the majesty of the sultan, in his turn, totally lost his presence of mind: when the sultan demanded whether he was the Messiah, he stood in trembling silence, and made no answer. He had some reason for

his apprehensions; for the sultan made him the following truly Turkish proposal:"That he should shoot three poisoned arrows at the Messiah; if he proved invulnerable, he would himself own his title. If he refused to submit to this ordeal, he had his choice, to be put to death, or to embrace Mahometanism." The interpreter urged

him to accept the latter alternative-Sabbathai did not hesitate long, he seized a turban from a page, and uttered the irrevocable words, "I am a Mussulman." The grand seignior, instead of dismissing him with contempt, ordered him a pelisse of honour, named him Aga Mahomet Effendi, and gave him the title of Capidgi Basha. Consternation at this strange intelligence spread through the followers of Sabbathai; prophets and prophetesses were silent; but Sabbathai was daunted only by the deathdenouncing countenance of the sultan. He issued an address to his brethren in Israel. "I, Mahomet Capidgi Basha, make it known unto you, that God hath changed me from an Israelite to an Ismaelite. He spake, and it was done; he ordered, and it was fulfilled. Given in the ninth day of my renewal according to his holy will." He most ingeniously extracted prophetic intimations of his change both from tradition and scripture. In the book called "Pirke Elieser," it was written, "that the Messiah must remain some time among the unbelievers." From the scripture the example of Moses was alleged, who "dwelt among the Ethiopians ;" and the text of Isaiah," he was numbered among the transgressors." For some time he maintained his double character with great success, honoured by the Moslemites as a true believer, by the Jews as their Messiah. Many of the latter followed his example, and embraced Islamism. St. Croix had frequently heard him preach in the synagogue, and with so much success, that scarcely a day passed but Jews seized the turbans from the heads of the Turks, and declared themselves Mussulmen. His Polish wife died; he again married the daughter of a learned man, who was excommunicated on account of the unlawful connexion, by the Rabbins. She also embraced Islamism. At length the Rabbins, dreading the total extinction of Judaism, succeeded in gaining the ear of the sultan. The Messiah was seized, and confined in a castle near Belgrade, where he died of a colic in the year 1676, in the fifty-first year of his age. It might have been expected that his sect, if it survived his apostacy, at least would have expired with his death; but there is no calculating the obstinacy of human credulity; his followers gave out that he was transported to heaven like Enoch and Elijah; and notwithstanding the constant and active opposition of the Jewish priesthood, the sect spread in all quarters. His forerunner,

Nathan of Gaza, had abandoned his cause, on his embracing Islamism, and prophesied against him in Italy and Corfu. But it is the most extraordinary fact of all, that Nehemiah, his most vehement opponent, recanted his enforced Islamism, and after all embraced Sabbathaism. A prophet of Smyrna proclaimed, that the Messiah would re-appear in 111 years. But the doctrine of Michael Cardoso, which spread rapidly from Fez to Tripoli, and even to Egypt, was the most extravagant-the son of David, he said, would not appear till all Israel were either holy or wicked-as the latter was far the easier process, he recommended all true Israelites to accelerate the coming of the Messiah, by apostatizing to Mahometanism -numbers with pious zeal complied with this advice. Sabbathaism still exists as a sect of Judaism; though, probably, among most of its believers, rather supported by that corporate spirit which holds the followers of a political or religious faction together, than by any distinct and definite articles of

belief.

THE CHRISTMAS MUSINGS OF A YOUNGER BROTHER.+

"Giorno d'orror!"-Semiramide.

WHO talks of a merry Christmas ?-barbarous anomaly!-save unto those who pay their bills at Midsummer ;-a consoling irregularity unachievable by a younger brother! Ensconced in a bachelor domicile in the lugubrious gentility of Bury Street, I mark the daily disappearance of my co-mates through the fog—each bound on some holidayerrand of festivity. Hatfield has unfurled its Christmas banner;-Gorhambury exhibits its usual royalty-graced hospitalities; the Deepdene already unites its azure coterie; -the turkies of Strathfieldsaye are gobbling for the approach of the corps diplomatique; Sudburn claims its select fraction of the fashionable mob ;—Brighton yawns to devour its beau reste ;-some depart for Burleighsome fly for Stowe

And leave the world to wretchedness and me!

Why-why was I born!

Christmas-thou period of persecutions! Christmas-thou season of duns!-thy days are fortunately the shortest of the year; for we number their hours by single knocks, and peruse their records in those importunate long, narrow, wafered epistles, which unfailingly "wait for an answer." Retributive-retrospective remorseless epoch!-when every

+From the Court Journal.-No. XXXV.

pleasure and every acquisition of the preceding three hundred and sixty-five days recalls itself figuratively to our remembrance ;-when threadbare and valet-claimed coats become vivified in the three-columned archives of our rapacious taylor;-when evaporated perfumes re-distil themselves into existence in Delcroix's bill, and the ices we have devoured are palpably re-frozen in the Gorgon demands of Grange or Gunter; when the peremptory accuracy of étrennes, and wages, and Christmas-boxes, admit of no postponement-when our own familiar friends intrude with a memorandum of "that 'ere trifle ;"when our foes (or tradesmen) aggravate their unprincipled demands for their principal, by their interested hints for interest:Christmas ! cold, calculating, dark, desponding Christ

mas!

Give me to drink mandragora,

That I may dream away the lapse of time!

Ye Gods! what spectres of rusty cravats and exhausted gloves-what phantoms of ragged lingerie-what ghosts of waistcoats, now gathered to their graves, arise in my fevered mind whenever I pace the commercial streets of Bond or Regent !

I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most dear-

were

Would-would-that their memory stamped into oblivion! What blundering scholar has asserted that the fatal dragon's teeth, sown by Cadmus, to become instruments of human destruction, were in fact only typical of the letters of his invention?__ I deny the allegory!-for the alphabet is an innocuous engine, compared with the officious numerals of Arabia ;-effective only in the immortalization of debt and ruin! Arithmetic is that by-way of the march of intellect which conducts the profuse and improviThe united dent into the King's Bench! initials L. S.D. prefixed to a manuscript, ever incite my lips to a pious invocation of "Lord Send Deliverance!" and those of my valet to a muttered annotation of "Lo! Sad Defaulter!" Why-why was I born!

Last week a well-proportioned, un-Christmas-looking letter was placed in my hands, and I saw, by its embonpoint and illegible address, that it was franked by Delorainea contempt of caligraphy being one among the I hailed it innumerable droits d'ainesse! enforced no postman's penny-fee-and bewith pleasure for two reasons; because it cause methought it augured of an invitation the fraternal epistle commenced, "My dear for the holidays. Vain trust! idle delusion!

fellow"

-a very ordinary preface to the dedeviatingly and abruptly announces his promand of a favour; whereas my brother unjects of hospitality to "Dear William." It