Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/65

 iis.viiLJuLYi9,i9i&] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The Jews of To-day. By Arthur Ruppin. Trans- lated by Miss Margery Bentwicb. (Bell & Sons )

THIS is a scholarly work by Dr. Arthur Ruppin of Berlin, who spent some years in Palestine studying the subject at first hand. It has been* excellently translated by Miss Margery Bentwich, who has turned a stiff book into a very readable volume. A Foreword has been contributed by Dr. Joseph Jacobs of New York. Thanks to Miss Bentwich, English students of Hebrew psychology are now brought " up to date " at what is probably an important stage in the history of Jewish" world-politics." The book, indeed, makes its appearance at a timely moment, for in England, after a lapse of 700 years, we are on the eve of a great revival of Jewish learning ; and in America also the augury is good. Starting out with some unmerited animadversion upon Moses Mendelssohn and hjs services to the Neo- Hebrew culture and the " Haskalah Movement " generally, Dr. Ruppin treats us to a masterly survey of Jewish history, showing the diverse course of its progress, with its checks and counter- checks. In his view the old Ghetti and a robust birthrate were among the chief safeguards of the race. Now, with larger liberties, with unchecked intercourse, and with a shrinking of births, Dr. Ruppin, looking to the future, gloomily foresees nothing but ultimate annihilation. To prevent that disaster he advocates a sort of creeping back to Palestine, unless, by diplomacy, the Jews can manage to force the front door. Such a mode of reconquest will hardly appeal to all the Chosen People, many of whom are by no means afraid of Western culture, in the resistance to which the author has grown to believe that the modern Jew has lost his cunning. In their opinion, Israel has lost nothing of his old vitality ; the recu- perative resources of the Torah are still unex- hausted ; and upon those rests the Jews' claim to the world's goodwill.

In spite of the morbidity of its tone, however, Dr. Ruppin's book fascinates. Its frigid nml dispassionate pursuit of truth, and its bewildering array of tabulated data and figures, are discarded as soon as we arrive at part ii.

With restrained eloquence the writer warmly and learnedly expresses, in his chapter on ' Jewish Nationalism,' his whole-hearted belief in Palestine as a solution to the problem of the future of Jewry, differing from those who have learned to look forward to America as the ultimate haven of the race.

Aberdeen. By John Milne, LL.D. ('Aberdeen

Journal ' Office.)

Celtic Place-Names. (Same author and publisher.) Ix the first work Dr. Milne has collected a series of papers on Aberdeen which he wrote for a news- paper without any intention of reprinting them in book-form, but many wished to have them preserved permanently, and for this purpose the author has revised the papers. Dr. Milne, as a very old resi- dent of Aberdeen, is well acquainted with every- thing, topographical, antiquarian, or historical, associated with it; and there is not a page of his book that does not show the pains with which he has collected the information it contains.

' Celtic Place-Names ' in Aberdeenshire was written for the Committee of the Carnegie Trust. It contains a vocabulary of Gaelic words not in dictionaries, and the meaning and etymology of Gaelic place-names in Aberdeenshire. Dr. Milne states in the Introduction that the aim of the book is ** to give the meaning and the etymology, so far as they can be discovered, of all the Gaelic names of the places on the six-inch Ordnance Survey maps of Aberdeenshire." For this purpose it was necessary to examine all the names on the Ordnance Survey maps, many names which appear to be Scotch or Eng- lish being considered by Dr. Milne to be Gaelic in disguise. Dr. Milne states that " the examination of the names for etymological purposes has not brought out the least indication of the Pictish language,, which some philologists and etymologists imagine has left traces of its existence among Gaelic names." The origin of the Pictish myth is shown in the appendix to the Introduction.

THE REV. A. B. BEAVEX writes to us :

" In your review of the concluding volume of my 'Aldermen of the City of London' (11 S. vii. 479), which I feel much compunction in criticizing, a ' genealogical error ' is attributed to me in that I have said that the daughter of Sir John Brugge (Winifred, widow of Sir Richard Sackville) married the old Marquess of Winchester ('the willow'), your reviewer assuming that the lady's husband', was the second marquess.

"I have the support of Profs. Tait and Pollard in their 'D.N.B.' articles on the first and third marquesses respectively, and also of Doyle ('Com- plete Baronage,' iii. 703). Doyle gives the date of the marriage vaguely as 'after 1566.' That the first marquess (' the willow') did marry in the last year of his life is proved by the following quota- tions from the first volume of the Rutland Manu- scripts (Hist. MSS. Commission, Twelfth Report App., part iv.) :

" ' 1570[-1J, Feb. 15. John Manners to his brother the Earl of Rutland. "My Lord Marquess [of Winchester] will be married at Easter " (p. 90).

"1571, May 14. George Delves to the Earl of Rutland. " My Lord Marquess ' t of Winchester] is married. That same day he was verv fine and crank and good afoot without a staff. Now he has returned to his old custom, and ere long I fear he- will be dead at her side" (p. 92).'

"The Marquess died March 10, 1571/2, at an advanced age probably 87, though some writers make him over 90.

' It is true that the letters of John Manners and George Delves do not give the name of his second wife, but those who make Winifred Sackville the wife of the second marquess do not record any second marriage of his father, as to which I think there can be no doubt, and I submit, with the utmost respect for your reviewer, that on this point I was not in error in my statement in ' The Aldermen of the City of London.' "

WE have received the Ninth Annual Report of the Catholic Record Society, which was presented at a meeting held on the Oth'inst. at Archbishop's House, Westminster, under the presidency of the Duke )f Norfolk. As our readers know, the object of tlii> Society is to transcribe, print, index, and distribute
 * o its members registers of baptisms, marriages,