2i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of interest to Jewish capitalists. Under these circumstances the canon- 

 ical writers finally decided that, being in any case lost, it was imma- 

 terial whether the Jews committed a few more or a few less sins ; the 

 borrowing Christians, however, were excused by their necessities. 



The interest demanded by the Jews was, it is true, exceedingly 

 high, and often beyond the power of the debtor to pay, but this was a 

 result of the value of money at the time, of the scarcity of coin, and 

 above all, of the oppressive amounts which the Jews were obliged to 

 pay to princes and town authorities. The Caorsines and the great 

 Italian bankers put their demands just as high as the Jews, and where 

 they got the trade in money into their own hands the desire arose, as 

 for example in Paris at the beginning of the fourteenth century, to 

 have the Jews back again, since their activity as money-lenders w r as, 

 on the whole, in many ways beneficial, and at that time irreplaceable. 

 They did for the northern countries and for Spain what was done for 

 Italy by the bankers' associations of the so-called Lombards, and by 

 the money-brokers of Asti, Sienna, Florence, and other cities, who 

 were partly patronized and partly silently tolerated (and in either case 

 frequently called into requisition) by the Popes and bishops. In France 

 and England there was even at times competition between Lombard 

 and Jew. The Emperor Louis's son, Louis the Brandenburger, issued 

 in the year 1352 a public invitation to the Jews to settle free of tax- 

 ation in his land, because " since the time when the Jews were de- 

 stroyed (referring to the great massacre of 1348), there has been every- 

 where, both among rich and poor, a deficiency in ready money." 



-o^-o- 



I 



CHEMISTRY IN HIGH-SCHOOLS. 



By ELISA A. BOWEN. 



HAVE, for some years, been trying to improve the teaching of 

 chemistry in girls' schools. It is, of course, work of the most 

 elementary character. I wished earnestly to make it, so far as it went, 

 inductive study in other words, to train the observing powers to se- 

 lect for themselves the significant facts ; and to train the reasoning 

 powers to draw for themselves, with some degree of independence, 

 the more important of the general principles which we call the theory 

 of chemistry. 



When I began to teach this subject, about six years ago, the pro- 

 gressive teachers had become dissatisfied with the old plan of book- 

 study or lecture, with experiments by the teacher. The best thing 

 offered as improvement was the performance of experiments by the 

 pupils themselves. This was certainly an important advance ; and 

 manipulation is, first or last, essential to any complete knowledge of 



