An old man grey and dove-like, with his great | nest on the sugar-loaf of Teck was burnt beard white and long. by the insurgent peasantry in the PeasHe it was whom, entirely unsolicited, ants' War in 1525, when castles flamed Maximilian created Duke of Würtemberg throughout Swabia and the Black Forest. and of Teck, in 1496, at Worms, and au- It was never rebuilt, but the palace at thorized him thenceforth to bear the arms Kirchheim was reconstructed and enof Teck along with Würtemberg. He larged. The dukes do not, however, also conferred on him and his successors seem to have visited it much. Their male in tail the office of hereditary ban- palace at Urach was but ten or twelve ner-bearer to the Holy Roman Empire. miles' distance. The Castle of Teck As already said, Eberhart had a difficult crowns, as already said, a sugar-loaf, and task to accomplish in securing the well- it is a sugar-loaf of Jura limestone butbeing of his people after he was removed, tressed up by basalt. It commands an and also of his own house. The family of extensive view - Esslingen is visible from Teck, on whose lands, castles, and titles it, and the heights above Stuttgart. The he had entered, had gone to pieces in part peak of Hohenstaufen is within the range by division of estates among all the chil- of sight. To the south the entire horizon dren. Eberhart introduced the right of is occupied by the mountain plateau of primogeniture and the inseparable unity the Rauhe Alb, that inclines to the Danof all the Würtemberg possessions. That ube, which washes its base. It is a bald was in the interest of his family, to secure and dreary region; but the valley below it against the fate of the first Teck family. Teck, with its many ruined castles once Next he drew up his will with great care, occupied by the feudal servants of the bequeathing, indeed, the duchies of Wür- dukes, is laughing with richness. Immetemberg and Teck to his good-for-nothing diately below the mountain and castle is nephew, but so hampering him and his the little town of Owen, in the church of successors with constitutional checks that which is the sepulchre of the first dukes any serious misconduct such as would do of Teck, with a simple boldly sculptured injury to the country and people would heraldic monument above it representing lead to his deposition. the Teck arms (lozengy, sable, and or), and the crest (a parrot's head clothed in the livery of the coat). The crest was afterwards changed, and the parrot gave way to a dog. And, in fact, his nephew was thus deposed by the Estates of the duchy for transgressing the provisions of the will two years after the death of Eberhart with the Beard. By virtue of this remarkable will, Würtemberg and Teck enjoyed for three hundred years a constitution more liberal than any other German principality. The provisions of the will were ratified in the capitulation of Tübingen in 1514, and every duke on assuming the reins of government was required to swear to obServe the capitulation, which was the Magna Charta of the land. At Kirchheim on the Lauter was the ancient capital of the Dukes of Teck, a walled town, where they had a palace and their mint. But they had been constrained to part with half of it to the Counts of Würtemberg for some ready money to be spent in Italy in 1359, and to bind themselves not to part with the other half to any other purchaser. Twenty years later the other half went in the same way, also the Castle of Teck itself; and in 1385 every particle of the ancestral property had been annexed to the estates of the Counts of Würtemberg, who had long occupied the parallel valley of Urach and the castle commanding it. The old eagle The crest of the Würtembergers has gone through several alterations. At one time they wore on their helmet a basket of green rushes and leaves. This was due to their having inherited the county of Gröningen. Then they changed it slightly; they kept the basket, but filled it with peacocks' feathers. Lastly, they assumed the red bugle mounted in gold that has remained their crest ever since. Nevertheless, an addition was made also to that. Probably it was thought that some reminiscence of the earlier crest should be preserved, so three feathers were stuck in the mouth of the bugle; but the feathers were now converted into ostrich plumes, these plumes supplanting the peacock feathers, as these latter had taken the place of the fresh green leaves. The Dukes of Würtemberg remained Dukes of Teck, quartering the lozenges of Teck with the stags' horns of Wür temberg till 1805, when Frederick I., Duke of Würtemberg and Teck, was created king of Würtemberg by Napoleon, whereupon the royal arms were completely changed the Würtemberg stags' horns thenceforth empaled the Hohenstaufen | furnished at the International Congress of lions. There is no Hohenstaufen blood Hygiene held recently. in the family, but the counts of Würtemberg obtained the lands and seat of the Hohenstaufens as well as the land and seat of the Tecks. The Teck quartering was abandoned. The next brother to Frederick, first king, was Louis, hardly two years his junior. By his wife, Henriette, daughter of Prince Charles of NassauWeilburg, he left a son, Alexander, who entered the Austrian service and married the Countess Claudine of Rheday. The title of Duke of Teck was granted in 1863 to his eldest son, the present duke, whose sisters were at the same time created princesses of Teck. From The Asiatic Quarterly Review. THE HEALTH LAWS OF THE BIBLE. The Jewish law enforces strict examination of the lungs in the case of cattle; but, strangely enough, dispenses with it in the case of poultry, hitherto deemed equally liable to tuberculosis. Dr. Koch, however, has pointed out to the International Medical Congress of 1890 that the tubercle cultures from fowls were a quite distinct species and innocuous to man. You are aware that, for purposes of life assurance, inquiry is invariably made into the family history and the causes of death of the near relations of the person proposing for assurance; and especially as to whether any cases of consumption have occurred in his family. My own experience, which extends over thirty years, agrees with that of numerous physicians, and I can confidently assert that Jews are remarkably free from scrofulous and tubercular complaints. It is an established fact that environment has much to do with liability to consumption. The disease can be contracted even by the inhalation of the bacilli in the sputum of a patient, so that it would be absurd to claim for the Jews absolute immunity from the malady. Copious statistics, however, go far to establish its comparative rarity among the Jews. The desire to avoid parasitic and infectious maladies, which, among the general public, is so essentially of modern growth, appears to have always dominated the hygienic laws of the Jews. Those animals are forbidden which are more particularly liable to parasites. And as it is in the blood that germs of disease circulate, an additional safeguard has been provided by the injunction which requires that even clean animals, when slaughtered, should be drained of their blood before being served for food. THE Mosaic Law prohibits all shellfish and also creeping things, including all insects and animalcules that can be discerned by the naked eye. Accordingly, the observant Jew carefully abstains from anything which has decayed or turned putrid. He must not partake of tainted milk, nor drink impure water; and we can thus understand how, oftentimes, the Jews escaped from the plague, from typhoid, and other kindred diseases. The cry during the Middle Ages was that the wells were poisoned; so they were, but the poison consisted of decayed animal matter from which the Jew kept aloof. Exodus xxii. 31 enacts that flesh that is torn must not be eaten. Leviticus xvii. 15, 16 prohibits the flesh of any animal that has died of itself. The rabbinical law requires the Jew likewise to abstain from flesh of any animal that is not killed in the prescribed way, or is found on inspection to Modern science, moreover, cannot but be diseased; and the directions given in admire the wisdom of the lawgiver who, the Talmud on this point are most minute, in the days of old, enjoined removal and and display a profound knowledge of physi- isolation of the patient, disinfection of the ology. An animal, the lungs of which are clothing, and other safeguards to prevent in any way affected by tubercules, has the spread of the disease. Where contaalways been by Jews considered unfit for gion attached to garments, or a house was food. But it is only quite recently that found insanitary and dangerous to health, the danger of eating the flesh of cattle the priest who, in olden time, acted as the suffering from pleuro-pneumonia has been Jewish physician and local sanitary augenerally admitted. In corroboration of thority, was empowered to enforce their this point, I would refer to the evidence destruction. The Jewish law is strong of Dr. Drysdale before a medical confer- upon the point that the dead should be ence at Leeds, and of Dr. Behrend, whose buried as soon as signs of putrefaction set article in the Nineteenth Century, Sep-in; and there are numerous sanitary regutember, 1889, deserves attention. Volu- lations for those who come in contact with minous evidence also on this point was the dead. The Talmud (Baba Bathra, 25) lays down the rule that cemeteries must | The greatest act of self-control is the habitbe at least fifty cubits removed from the ual fasting incumbent upon the Jew. By city; and extramural burial has always fasting, I do not mean the partaking of been a Jewish institution. The Bible is meagre food, but entire abstention from clearly adverse to cremation; but so anx-meat and drink_for_twenty-four hours. ious were the Jewish sages to promote the Thus, of the Jewish Day of Atonement it "return of the dust to the earth as it was," is said in Leviticus xxiii. 32: "Ye shall that they commended the burial of the afflict your souls from even unto even." corpse in loose boards, and the body being The strictly observant Jews keep no less brought in direct contact with the earth; than six fasts in the year; so that to the they discountenanced brick graves; and Jew, abstention becomes a kind of second some rabbis in the East, advocate the use nature. of quicklime to promote decomposition. Deuteronomy xxii. II enacts: "Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together." Here we have the wearing of pure woollen stuff recommended by the law of Moses, three thousand years before Jaeger urges its adoption. I have dwelt on this subject perhaps at too great a length, but I ascribe to the habitual temperance of the Jew the fact that he becomes so readily acclimatized in all parts of the world; while it is to the lack of such self-control that the disappear. ance of the aborigines in America and Australia may be attributed. Self-control It is no part of my task to discuss the has to be exercised also by the Jews in moral qualities of the Jew; but his tem- their sexual relations, in compliance with perance is an admitted fact. I doubt the precepts contained in Leviticus. Dr. whether a strictly observant Jew has ever Behrend has pointed out that observance been convicted of drunkenness. Some of these laws ensures procreation at a spe people, however, labor under the impres- cially favorable period. In the first chapsion that, whilst the Jew is temperate in ter of the Bible (Genesis i. 28) occur the the use of intoxicating drinks, he is an words: "God said unto man, Be fruitful inordinately great eater. I can find no and multiply, and replenish the earth.” ground for such an assertion. The Jew is The pious Jew is anxious, therefore, that fond of the good things of this life, for his his children should be married at a comis a joyous religion, which does not comparatively early age. The sons of the mend undue ascetic practices. The Nazarite had to bring a sin-offering because he imposed on himself unnecessary restraints. Chapter viii. of Nehemiah describes how the people spent New Year's day, from early morning to midday in prayer and expounding the law. Then Ezra and Nehemiah said: "Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye grieved; for the joy of the Lord is your strength." At the other festivals, the Jew is distinctly commanded to rejoice, and regale those dependent on him. How, it may be asked, does the Jew maintain moderation, which with him is habitual, and not the result of a violent effort? I ascribe it to the habitual self-control which the observant Jew has to exercise, and of which I have already given instances. Jews in eastern Europe marry long before they are able to gain their livelihood; and it is understood that either the father or father-in-law must maintain them until they are able to earn a competence. Where the parents cannot maintain them, marriage is not encouraged. Hence we must not be surprised that the marriage rate among Jews is less than among Christians. Early marriages among the povertystricken can only lead to misery; and it is to be feared that the lesson of the Talmud, that you must first build a house and earn your living before taking unto yourself a wife, is not always followed. However, the result of early marriage amongst the Jews is to diminish profligacy. The percentage of illegitimate children among them is much less than among other denominations. II. SIR MICHAEL. By Sir Frederick Pollock, . Macmillan's Magazine, Blackwood's Magazine, 771 788 TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |