GEORGE ELIOT AND JUDAIS M. "It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen."-ARISTOTLE: Poetics. THERE is a plant in the East, the seeds of which are lifted by the winds and carried into every region of the earth. Where they fall, there they germinate, unaffected by variations in the nature of the soil, and proof against any inclemency of atmosphere into which they may chance to have come. The observer stands meditative and amazed at the wondrous power of growth by which representatives of the A species are enabled to strike root and flourish under the most different climatic conditions. In spots where the land offers itself kindly and favourably they quickly bud, and attain to a breadth of propagation which narrows the area of the other flora of the district, and seems ever to push forward towards sole dominion. As though it were the sun of their home that ripened them, as though the juices of their far-off place of origin ran in them, they advance with prosperous development till the native growths are seized with fear at these ineradicable children of a foreign soil. Upon barren cliffs and in lonely abysses-where blossoming and sprouting seem impossible-they know the secret of existence; they surmount every obstacle, and twine themselves around their unwilling standing-places with insuperable strength, until the ramifications of their fibres, penetrating deeper and deeper into The the crags, knit themselves together and strengthen, burst the rocks asunder, and clasp the hard foundations with their mighty arms. They tower aloft in the golden light, as if in insolent disdain of the rugged earth, and soar into the quickening air which breathes around them, heedless whether her blessings be obtained by them as bold, aggressive immigrants, or indigenous, hereditary guests. ravages of fire and sword, even, cannot permanently outroot them; their stems. remain fixed in the ground, protected as it were by some mysterious guardian, and fresh shoots keep ever springing up to renew once more the inherent prolific power of propagation. It is a wild luxuriance of unceasing growth, which does not wait to be tended from without, but finds for itself and draws together the means for its own increase. And for this reason it has maintained its ground without help from the law, which gladly countenances, indeed, all attacks made upon it, and all attempts aimed at its suppression. The globe is overrun with the inevitable plant; what will restrain its unceasing fecundity? Men are almost beginning to abandon themselves helplessly to what cannot be altered, and to study what use there may be in a phenomenon which they cannot get rid of, no matter how well assured they are of its injurious nature. The comparison may well halt, for it refers to an unique, incomparable existence, the riddle of the history of nations -the Jews. Destroyed as the national independence of Judæa was by Rome, from the bones of the vanquished there had already arisen -the Avenger; a branch severed from the parent trunk became a rod of correction for the oppressor; and a solitary Jewish idea sufficed, in its disfigurement, to shatter the 7 |