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. History of Europe

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

Jewish race, or, indeed, to do more than present the mere history of the proceedings there—an event in itself, however, sufficiently interesting.

But something more is required than such a recital to set forth fairly their nobler qualities as devotees to their religious beliefs, as patriots, as warriors, and hence this narrative will turn back into the Past, when their nation, besides its faith, still possessed a Sacred Shrine, a capital, and a country to die for, if it could not defend against overwhelming numbers.

So intense and merciless has been the desire of Christian fanaticism to see unceasing vengeance inflicted upon the whole Jewish race, in all the ages which have since elapsed, because of a crucifixion, for which it was surely not responsible, that it yet dwells, though in lessening degree in these later times, with evident satisfaction upon the alleged strange destiny which-under the divine anathema and in fulfillment of certain prophecies-had condemned that unfortunate people to wander over the face of the earth as scattered, homeless outcasts. The dangers of the location of Jerusalem itself, and the actual conditions faced by the Jews throughout their occupancy of Palestine are either ignored, or else treated as having little or nothing to do with their long record of national calamities, which are all ascribed solely to supernatural vengeance.

But quite apart from all prophecies by angry prophets of ruin and punishment to be visited upon the Jewish kingdom, sometimes because of the transgressions of its people, at others because of the wickedness of its rulers its weakness and its perilous situation, directly in the pathway between warring Egypt, on the one hand, and Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, on the other, would,

apparently, sufficiently explain its repeated subjugations, not only at the hands of those great powers, but at those of Alexander and of Rome as well, when they advanced to conquer the world.

Any other fate than that which actually befell it could hardly have been anticipated, or avoided, by a small, weak State so unfortunately located, and was, in truth, much the same as that which the small neighbouring nations around it likewise underwent in the repeated collisions of those mightiest powers of antiquity upon and across their territories; and, in the cases of the latter, at all events, with no help from an angry, jealous deity to bring punishment and destruction upon them as transgressors of his special commands to them as his chosen peoples, nor constant, woeful prophetic denunciations to mark and foretell it, as in the case of unhappy Israel, whose righteous prophets never ceased to afflict it with their dismal lamentations.

A not unnatural or unreasonable view is entertained that "caught between the upper and the nether millstones," Israel and its small neighbours were ground to powder, and all alike perished, the victims of their exposed geographical situations and weakness as military powers, rather than from any other special cause.

In those times, the "Great Powers" showed even less regard than they do to-day for the rights of small states, which would gladly have remained neutral in their wars had they been permitted to do so. And an unfortunate alliance with the losing power necessarily entailed upon its small allies all the woes and punishments of defeat— unspeakably more destructive and cruel than the severest penalties that would be exacted in these more humane, enlightened ages.