odox Jew. Brandes
writes of Goldschmidt that: "In spite of his cosmopolitan spirit, he has
always loved two nationalities above all others and equally well,--the
Jewish and the Danish. He has looked upon himself as a sort of
noble-born bastard; and with the bat of the fable he has said
alternately to the mice, 'I am a mouse' and to the birds, 'I have
wings.' He has endeavored to give his answer to the questions of the
Jew's place in modern culture."

Goldschmidt was born on the 26th of October, 1819. His early childhood
was spent partly in the country, in the full freedom of country life,
and partly in the city, where he was sent to school in preparation for
the professional career his father had planned for him, in preference to
a business life like his own. Goldschmidt took part in the religious
instruction of the school, at the same time observing the customs of the
Jewish ritual at home without a full understanding of its
meaning,--somewhat as he was taught to read Hebrew without being able to
translate a word of it into Danish. In the senior class his religious
instructor let him join in the Bible reading, but refused to admit him
to the catechism class; as a consequence he failed to answer a few
questions on his examination papers, and fell just short of a maximum.
This made him feel that he was ostracized by his Jewish birth, and put
an end to his desire for further academic studies.

At the age of eighteen he began his journalistic career as editor of a
provincial paper, the care of which cost him a lawsuit and subjected him
to a year's censorship. Soon after, he sold the paper for two hundred
dollars, and with this money he started the Copenhagen weekly The
Corsair, which in no time gained a large reading public, and whose
Friday appearance was awaited with weekly increasing interest. The
editorials were given up to aesthetic and poetic discussions, and the
small matter treated the questions of the day with a pointed wit that
soon made The Corsair as widely feared as it was eagerly read. He had
reached only the third number when it was put under censorship, and
lawsuits followed in quick succession. Goldschmidt did not officially
assume the responsibility of editor, although it was an open secret that
he was author of most of the articles; publicly the blows were warded
off by pretended owners whose names were often changed. One of the few
men whom The Corsair left unattacked was Soeren Kierkegaard, for whose