base on quasi-Scriptural authority, as in Malachi iv. 5-6: "Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Many stories of his exploits are related in the Talmud,' the 'Midrash,' and the Zohar': how he relieves the needy and suffering, chastises the godless, etc. But his main mission is to assist the ascetic saints when they are engaged in the study of the Divine secrets. Not only the Hasidim sect, but even many orthodox Hebrews, repeat every Saturday evening songs and hymns wherein are cited the deeds of Elijah, as related in the Bible and tradition. Saturday evening is specially a propitious time for those who keep the Sabbath holy; for Elijah sits then under the Ets Hayim (Tree of Life), and records the good deeds of the pious. Elijah's name is then repeated one hundred and thirty times. The five Hebrew letters in "Elijah" are transposed one hundred and twenty times, in the following manner: ELIAH (Elijah), ELIHA, ELHIA, ELHAI, corresponding to the numerical value of the Hebrew letters composing "Eliahu Hanabhi» (Elijah the Prophet): 1+30+10+5+6+5+50+2+10 +1=120. In addition to these 120 transpositions they repeat ten times the regular untransposed name of ELIAH (Elijah), making the total 130. Those who are unable to pronounce these difficult transpositions repeat 130 times "Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Prophet," etc. This points to the Hebrew word Ka L=130 (Swift), and hints also at 'A B=72 (Cloud); both words are mentioned in Isaiah xix. 1: “Behold the Lord rideth upon a 'Swift' (KaL, 130) 'Cloud'" ('A B, 72). Among those who chiefly distinguished themselves (since 1550) and who are designated by the title Elohe or Eloke (Divine), and could perform miracles, are Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522-1570), author of the Kabbalistic work 'Pardes Rimonim' (The Garden of Pomegranates); Jesaiah Horwitz (1570-1630), author of the 'Sh La H'; Isaac Loria, author of 'Ets Haïm' (Tree of Life), and 'Sepher Haguilgulim' (Metempsychosis); and his disciple Haim Vital (Vidal), and Israel Baal Shem, born in 1750, at Medziborze, Poland. The number of the Hebrew books and commentaries on the Kabbalah amounts to thousands. The following are the most important and accessible: The Talmud,' Tract. Chagigeh (Haguigah), Chap. ii., fols. 11-16. The 'Zohar,' attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Yohaï. First edition, Cremona and Mantua, 1560. (There are numerous later editions.) 'Sepher Tikane Ha-Zohar' (attributed to the same). Leghorn, 1842. 'Sepher Yetsireh' (The Book of Creation), with ten Commentaries. Warsaw, 1884. 'Sepher Habahir' (The Book of Brilliant Light). Amsterdam, 1651. (There are several editions.) 'Pardes Rimônim' (The Garden of Pomegranates), by Rabbi Moses Cordovero. 'Sha'are Ôrah' (Gates of Light), by Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilia. (There is a Latin translation by P. Ricius, 1516.) 'Ets Hayim' (The Tree of Life), compiled by Hayim (Chayim) ben Joseph Vital (Vidal). Korzec, 1784. 'Sh'nē Lūhoth Habrith (The Two Tables of the Covenant), by Jesaiah Horwitz. 'Beth Ha-Midrasch,' a collection of apocryphal midrashim, mostly treating of Jewish folk-lore and Kabbalah; compiled and translated by Adolph Jellinek. Leipzig, 1853-55. 'Guinzē Hakhmath Hakaballah: Auswahl Kabbalistischer Mystik' (A Selection of Kabbalist Mystic). Jellinek, Leipzig, 1853. 'Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kabbala' (Contributions toward the History of Kabbalah). Jellinek, Leipzig, 1852. 'Kabbalah Denudata' (Latin). By Baron C. Knorr von Rosenroth. Sulzbach, 1677. English translation, with Preface by S. L. MacGregor Mathews. London, 1887. The Kabbalah, An Essay,' by C. D. Ginzburg, 1865. 'Kabbalah' in 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' Ninth Ed., by C. D. Ginzburg. 'La Kabbale, ou la Philosophie Réligieuse des Hebreux,' by Adolphe Frank (new ed.). Paris, 1889. 'Midrash Hazohar: Die Religionsphilosophie des Zohar: Eine Kritische Beleuchtung der Frank'schen "Kabbala »› (The Religious Philosophy of the Zohar': A Critical Examina tion of Frank's 'Kabbalah '). (By) Joel (D. H.), Leipzig, 1849. 'Le Livre des Splendeurs' (The Book of Splendors), by Eliphaz Lévi, Paris, 1894. 'Geschichte der Juden' (History of the Jews), Graetz, Vol. viii., pp. 96-98, 219–221, 242. THE KALEVALA BY WILLIAM SHARP HE great Finnish epic, the 'Kalevala,' is in a sense the most significant national epic in existence. In it are reflected not only the manners, beliefs, superstitions, and customs of a race, but the very soul of that race. The Finnish pulse beats in the Kalevala,' the Finnish heart stirs throughout its rhythmic sequences, the Finnish brain molds and adapts itself within these metrical limits. There is, too, certainly no other instance so remarkable of the influence upon the national character of an epic work which as it were summarizes the people for itself. In no exaggerated sense, the Finland of to-day is largely due to the immense influence of the national sentiment created by the universal adoption of the 'Kalevala' as, after the Scriptures, the chief mental and spiritual treasure-house of the Finnish nation. The word "epic" is frequently used too loosely; as for example when applied to the 'Ossian' of Macpherson. In the sense of continuity alone can the word "epic" properly be used; whereas great epical works such as the 'Kalevala' are really aggregations of epic matter welded into a certain homogeneity, but rather by the accident of common interest, and by the indomitable skill of one or more sagamen, than by any inherent necessity of controlled and yet inevitable sequent relation. When therefore one sees the 'Kalevala' referred to as recently in the instance of a critic of some standing — as an epic comparable with those of Milton or Dante, one must at once discount a really irrelevant comparison. For though both Dante and Milton, and doubtless Homer in his half-mythic time, summed up an infinitude of general knowledge and thought, their actual achievement stands to this day as individual and distinctive. But though we owe the 'Kalevala' as we know it to the genius of one man,- Elias Lönnrot of Helsingfors,- this man was the editor rather than the creator of the national epic. For the famous national epic of Finland is in reality composed of a great number of popular songs, ballads, incantations, and early runic poetry, strung together into an artistic whole by the genius of Dr. Lönnrot. The Finns were gradually dying out as a nation before the 'Kalevala' appeared. National hopes, aspirations, and ideals had long been slowly atrophying; and in another generation or two Russia would have absorbed all the intellectual life of the old Northern realm, and Finland have sunk to the status of a mere outlying province. At the same time the Finns have ever been a people of marked racial homogeneity, and have cherished their ancient language and literature with something of that passionate attachment which we find in all races whose heroic past dominates a present which in no respect can be compared with it. The upper classes would inevitably have become Swedish or Russian, and the majority of the people would in time have degenerated into a listless and mentally inert mass. Perhaps a great war, involving a national uprising, would have saved them from this slow death: but happily the genius of one man and the enthusiasm of contemporary and subsequent colleagues obviated any such tragically crucial test; for by applying the needed torch to the national enthusiasm, Lönnrot and his fellow-workers gave incalculable stimulus to the mental and actual life of their countrymen. For many ages the Finnish minstrels, who had ever been beloved of the people, went to and fro reciting the old sagas of the race, singing old national songs and telling the wonderful folk-tales of a remote and ancient land. These singers were known as the Runolainen, and played to the sound of the kantela, a kind of harp much like that which the Gaelic minstrels used to carry in their similar wanderings to and fro from village to village and from house to house. For generation after generation, much of the essential part of the 'Kalevala,' as we now know it, lived within the hearts and upon the lips of the peasants and farming classes: but with the changed conditions which came to the whole of Europe early in the present century, and with the political and other vicissitudes through which Finland in common with almost every other country has passed, it was inevitable that as elsewhere, this oral legendary lore should slowly fade before the pressing actualities of new and radically distinct conditions. The first man to make a systematic endeavor to stem the ebb of the national poetry and sentiment was Dr. Zacharias Topelius, who in 1822 published a small collection of Finnish folk poetry and legends. But fifteen years later Dr. Elias Lönnrot achieved that marvelous success which has been the admiration and wonder of Europe ever since, as well as the delight—and in a sense, as already indicated, the regeneration-of Finland itself. Dr. Lönnrot, inspired with a passionate enthusiasm for the historical language and legendary literature of his people, set himself the task of rescuing all that was best in the vast unprinted and uncollected mass of folk-lore which existed in his country. To this end he lived with the peasantry for many years and wandered from place to place, everywhere taking down from the lips of the people all that they knew of their popular songs or legendary lore, and including of course all they could tell him of local superstitions, incantations, and so forth. At first his researches were limited to the district of Karelia, in the Government of Kupio. Even within this limited scope he obtained, besides numerous fragmentary songs and a great number of proverbs and charms, a complete epos consisting of some 12,000 lines. These either fell naturally, or were arranged by him, in thirty-two parts, each consisting of from 200 to 700 verses. They were given to the world just as he had heard them sung or chanted; and in this, of course, lies their primary value. At the first, however, this all-important work attracted little attention when it was published in 1835-and this notwithstanding the fact that it appeared under the title of 'Kalevala (Kalewala), the ancient poetic designation of Finland. Five years later the Academy of Dorpat made the publication the subject of discussion at their meetings. Some nine years subsequently Dr. Lönnrot issued a new edition of nearly 23,000 verses in fifty so-called runes. But already the attention of scientific Europe had been drawn to this wonderful Finnish find. Not only the Swede and famous Finnish scholar Castrén, but the great German philologists, the two Grimms and Brockhaus, agreed in regarding the 'Kalevala' as a genuine epic; and as an epic it has ever since been received-although, as already hinted, a splendid epical national mirror rather than epic in the strict literary sense of the term. It would be pedantic, however, to refuse the term "epic" to the 'Kalevala,' for all that it does not conform to certain literary conditions which we associate with the epic pure and simple. Not only, from the date of the first discussions at Dorpat down to the present time, has the 'Kalevala' been admitted to be one of the most curious monuments of its kind posessed by any European people, but the chief authorities have agreed in regarding it as a composition possessing an almost unparalleled wealth of images and tropes, great flexibility of rhythm, and a copiousness of synonyms not to be met with in any other Northern tongue. Of course there is great divergence of opinion as to the identification of historic facts and arbitrary figments; that is, as to whether the incidents of the narrative refer to definite historical epochs, or are mainly mythical or allegorical. It is too loose a way of writing to aver, with one authority on the subject, that the date of its composition must be referred to a period anterior to the introduction of Christianity among the Finns in the fourteenth century; for while there is internal evidence to an even more ancient origin than this,—indeed, of an identity of names and traditions which points to an epoch anterior to the immigrations of the Karelin Finns into the districts which they now occupy,-not enough allowance is made for the arbitrary archaic coloring which by a natural law |