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“‘It is ever so with the fool. Allow him the wisdom that perceiveth and shunneth a serpent, and straightway he will believe he hath understanding to judge even between the cherubim.’”

At present we must end our extracts from the pages of Ben Eli; though we cannot close without appending the final reflection of the learned rabbi, who, having narrated a thousand other instances of the folly of the ape—how he pilfered from the treasury, how he stole jewels to hang about him, and how he plucked bare divers peacocks to make himself a glory from their plumes, observes:—

“An ape will ever be an ape, though compassed with gold, and silver, and ivory, and though his dwelling-place be even the court of King Solomon.”

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Giulio and Ippolito were sons of a farmer living near Padua. The old man was of a quiet and placable temper, rarely suffering any mischance to ruffle him, but, in the firm and placid hope of the future, tranquillising himself under the evil of the present. If blight came upon his corn one year, he would say ’twere a rare thing to have blights in two successive seasons; and so he would hope that the next harvest, in its abundance, might more than compensate for the scarcity of the last. Thus he lived from boyhood to age, and retained in the features of the old man a something of the lightness and vivacity of youth. His sons, however, bore no resemblance to their father. Instead of labouring on the farm they wasted their time in idly wishing that fortune had made them, in lieu of healthy, honest sons of a farmer, the children of some rich magnifico, that so they might have passed their days in all the sports of the times, in jousting, hunting, and in studying the fashions of brave apparel. They were of a humour at once impetuous and sulky, and would either idly mope about the farm, or violently abuse and ill-treat whomsoever accident might throw in their way. The old man was inly grieved at the wilfulness and disobedience of his sons, but, with his usual disposition, hoped that time might remedy the evil; and so, but rarely reproving them, they were left sole masters of their hours and actions.