SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been eserved for review in other foeus.] Manasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Lucien Wolf. (Macmillan and Co. 21s. net.)—We have here two-documentS, the work of Manasseh ben Israel,—the "Hope of Israel," in which he set forth for the information of Cromwell the claims of the Jews for protection, and the " Vindiciae Judseorum," in which, some years later, he replied to hostile criticisms. These are preceded by a highly interesting introduction. For more than three centuries England had been a closed land to the Jewish people. The Commonwealth period, fertile in change, brought about the end of this state of things. Opinion on the subject was curiously divided. Cromwell himself, always tolerant in mind, was favourable; his lay advisers were mostly hostile; the ministers, on the other hand, supported_ the plan, especially in the hope that an extensive conversion might take place. The mercantile interest was hostile. The Jews might be dan- gerous rivals. In the ens) the Jews were permitted to return, though there was no enabling legislation. An attempt was made, after the Restoration, to undo this work, but it failed; Chitrles "owed much to the Jews," as some advocate of Jewish emancipation in Parliament felicitously expressed it. It is a curious fact that the English Jews chiefly come from the Marranos, or conforming Jews of Spain and Portugal.
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