The history of Agathias is valuable as a chronicle. It shows that the
writer had little knowledge of geography, and was not enough of a
philosopher to look behind events and trace the causes from which they
proceeded. He is merely a simple and honest writer, and his history is a
business-like entry of facts. He dwells upon himself and his wishes with
a minuteness that might seem self-conscious, but is really _naif_; and
goes so far in his outspokenness as to say that if for the sake of a
livelihood he took up another profession, his taste would have led him
to devote himself to the Muses and Graces.

He wrote in the Ionic dialect of his time. The best edition of his
'Historia' is that of Niebuhr (1828). Those of his epigrams preserved in
the Greek anthology have not infrequently been turned into English; the
happiest translation of all is that of Dryden, in his 'Life of
Plutarch.'

ON PLUTARCH

Cheronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise;
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shar'd
(Their heroes written, and their lives compar'd);
But thou thyself could'st never write thy own:
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.

GRACE AGUILAR

(1816-1847)

Fifty years ago a Jewish writer of English fiction was a new and
interesting figure in English literature. Disraeli, indeed, had flashed
into the literary world with 'Coningsby,' that eloquent vindication of
the Jewish race. His grandiose 'Tancred' had revealed to an astonished
public the strange life of the Desert, of the mysterious vastness whence
swept forth the tribes who became the Moors of Spain and the Jews of
Palestine. Disraeli, however, stood in no category, and established no
precedent. But when Miss Aguilar's stories began to appear, they were
eagerly welcomed by a public with whom she had already won reputation
and favor as the defender and interpreter of her faith.

[Illustration: GRACE AGUILAR]

The youngest child of a rich and refined household, Grace Aguilar was
born in 1816 at Hackney, near London, of that historic strain of
Spanish-Jewish blood which for generations had produced not only beauty
and artistic sensibility, but intellect. Her ancestors were refugees
from persecution, and in her burned that ardor of faith which
persecution kindles. Fragile and sensitive, she was educated at home, by
her cultivated father and mother, under whose solicitous