its early annexation by Russia saved the province from the anarchy and
excitement which agitated Poland during its latter days.

Left to their fate, neglected by the authorities, and forming almost the
whole of the urban population, the Jews of Lithuania, in the full glare
of the eighteenth century, were in all essentials an autonomous
community with Jewish national and theocratic features. The Talmud did
service as their civil and religious code. The court of final appeal was
a Rabbinical expert, supported by the central synod and the local
_Kahal_, and exercising absolute authority over the moral and
material interests of those subordinated to his jurisdiction. The study
of the Law was carried to the extreme of devotion. To have an
illiterate, an _'Am ha-Arez_, a "rustic", in one's family, was
considered a pitiable fate.

Lithuania, in fine, was the promised land of Rabbinism, in which
everything favored the development of a national Jewish centre.

The natural poverty of the country, its barren soil, dense forests, and
lack of populous centres of civilization, all tended to keep the Polish
lords aloof. Poland offered them a more inviting sojourn. There was
nothing to hinder the pious scholars who had escaped from religious
persecution in the countries of Europe, especially France and Germany,
from devoting themselves, with all their heart and energy, to the study
of the Talmud and the ceremonials of their religion. No infusion of
aliens disturbed them. The inhospitable skies, the absence of
diversions, little troubled the refugees of the ghetto, for whom the
Book and the dead letter were all-sufficing. They were not affected,
their dignity was hardly wounded, by the haughty and arbitrary treatment
which the nobleman accorded to the Jewish "factor" and steward, and by