Black Sea, and, without taking time even to announce their "happy departure" from his capital to the Sublime Porte, Admiral Duckworth prepared to sail, in the utmost haste, to encounter the growing perils of the Dardanelles. And Mr. Arbuthnot, for the second time in about two months, was making another very swift passage to that fateful channel! Weighing anchor on the 2nd of March, the fleet appeared in order of battle, stood in nearly to within cannon-shot of the frightful array of batteries which were now fully prepared to overwhelm it, and perceiving that the Turks waited in grim silence for battle, it suddenly turned to the west and sailed towards the Straits. If anxiety and mortification reigned on board the English fleet, unbounded were the demonstrations of joy which burst forth in the city, at the sight of the hostile ships disappearing over the horizon of the Sea of Marmora, while French and Turks congratulated one another on this glorious result of the energy and courage they had mutually displayed under the most trying circumstances. Fortunately for the British fleet, the Turks and the French engineers had had too little time and means at their command to do much more than begin the preparations for its reception, but, even as it was, two of its battle-ships, the Windsor Castle and the Standard, were nearly destroyed by huge marble cannon-balls, weighing 700 or 800 pounds, and several hundred men were killed and wounded, besides much other damage done before it effected its escape. At Tenedos it was reinforced by other English ships, and joined by the Russian fleet of nine ships-of-the-line, under Admiral Siniavin, but the combined fleet would not venture again into the perilous Straits, which the French engineers soon rendered safe from all attack, although the entrance was closely blockaded by the English. With this episode the long contest at Constantinople by Great Britain and Russia against France ended. General Sebastiani remained the undisputed victor, and deservedly received every mark of gratitude and distinction which the grateful Sultan and his people could bestow, and was richly rewarded and promoted to high honors by his own sovereign, to whom and to France he had rendered services of such signal importance, at a time when they were most called for by the Empire. AUTHORITIES History of the Consulate and the Empire...M. Adolphe Thiers. Memoirs: The English before Constan tinople and Alexandria in 1807.... Mémoirs d'un Homme d'Etat.. Victoires et Conquêtes. .Sir Archibald Alison. M. Driault. . Prince Hardenberg. THE ASSEMBLY OF THE GREAT SAN HEDRIM AT PARIS IN 1807 No event, perhaps, in the history of the Jewish Race, since the memorable siege and destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, C. E., by the Roman army under Titus, has been of greater interest or attended with more important consequences to that people, than the meeting of the Great Sanhedrim, the Superior Court or Council of the Jewish people, convoked, under the orders and special protection of the Emperor Napoleon, at Paris in the year 1807-after an interval of more than seventeen hundred years since its last sitting in the Sacred City, in the year it was taken and destroyed in revenge for the defeats and humiliations of the Romans in a siege, in which the heroism and devotion shown by the Jews can scarcely find a parallel. In this Paper it is intended to present facts and observations and to draw conclusions, not from the Orthodox Jewish standpoint, but from that of a member of an alien and none too friendly race, whose ideas, or rather prejudices, let it be said, concerning that people, have been much changed in the effort to acquire a juster, fuller knowledge and understanding of its strange ideals and tragic history. Candour, also, compels the admission that the interest of the writer in the subject of their great assembly at Paris, was, at the outset, almost wholly academical, and by no means inspired with any purpose to utter panegyrics upon the martial qualities of the |