the Rev. Dr. H. Adler, Chief Rabbi, and Vol. VIII, "Notes on
some Contemporary References to Dr. Falk, the Ba'al Shem of London, in
the Rainsford MSS. at the British Museum," by Gordon P.G. Hills. The
following pages are taken entirely from these sources.

[483] Falk does not appear to have brought good fortune to the Goldsmid
family, for Margoliouth in a passage which evidently relates to Falk
says that, according to Jewish legend, the suicide of Abraham Goldsmid
and his brother was attributed to the following cause: "A Ba'al Shem, an
operative Cabalist, in other words a thaumaturgos and prophet, used to
live with the father of the Goldsmids. On his death-bed he summoned the
patriarch Goldsmid, and delivered into his hands a box, which he
strictly enjoined should not be opened till a tertain period which the
Ba'al Shem specified, and in case of disobedience a torrent of fearful
calamities would overwhelm the Goldsmids. The patriarch's curiosity was
not aroused for some time; but in a few years after the Ba'al Shem's
death, Goldsmid, the aged, half sceptic, half curious, forced open the
fatal box, and then the Goldsmids began to learn what it was to
disbelieve the words of a Ba'al Shem."--Margoliouth, _History of the
Jews_, II. 144.

[484] _Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society_, V. 162.

[485] Benjamin Fabre, _Eques a Capite Galeato_, p. 84.

[486] Benjamin Fabre, op cit., pp. 88, 90, 98, 110.

[487] Clavel, _Histoire pittoresque_, pp. 188, 390; Robison's _Proofs of
a Conspiracy_, p. 77.

[488] _The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia_ describes both _Nathan der Weise_
and _Ernst und Falk_ as prominent works on Masonry.

[489] There is, however, the possibility that Lessing may have had in
mind another Falk living at the same period; this was "John Frederick
Falk, born at Hamburg of Jewish parents, reported to have been head of a
Cabalistic College in London and to have died about 1824" (_Tranactions
of the Jewish Historical Society_, VIII. 128). But in view of the part
which the correspondence of Savalette de Langes shows the Ba'al Shem of
London to have played in the background of Freemasonry, it seems more
probable that he was the Falk in question. At any rate, both were Jews
and Cabalists.

[490] Who can this have been?

[491] The Duchesse de Gontaut relates in her _Memoires_ that the Due
d'Orleans was one day driving through the forest of Fontainebleau when a
man, half clothed and with a demented air, spr