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The cemetery of Sherish Israel covers five acres. All buried here were members of old Hebrew families, who worshiped in that synagogue in Nineteenth street, in New York, and were bound together by one faith and often by the ties of family and friendship. Some of its rabbis sleep here, as the Rev. Lyons Jaques, upon whose tomb is the verse from the 128th Psalm: "Behold truly thus shall be blessed the man who feareth the Lord." Here sleeps Dr. Gomas, of New York, physician; and here, Dr. Tobias, of the same fraternity.

Here is the burial plot of the Hart family, of which Mr. Hart, of the New York Third avenue Railroad is the best known to the public. He or another Mr. Hart of the same family came every morning with the Nathan brothers to the inquest on the murder of their father. In this lot, which, like all the others, is beautifully kept and bright with shrubs and willow trees and flowers, are buried Emily Grace Nathan, his wife, who died January 16, 1879, and Estelle Nathan, who died on the 21st of October, 1860, in the 29th year of her age. Here also rest his brother in law, Judge Albert Cardozo, between his wife, Rebecca Nathan, and his daughter, Grace Amy Cardozo. Michael H. Cardozo and others of the family are also buried here. Mr. Nathan's lofty and beautiful monument is a pillar or column with carved drapery, a cloak and tassels, and the simple inscription on the tomb is only "Benjamin Nathan, died July 29, 1870, in the 57th year of his age."

At the inquest the late Justice Dowling, of the Tombs, and the District Attorney, Mr. Fellows, assisted the Coroner when their other duties permitted. The night garments stained with blood and the carpenter's "dog" with which the murder was done were produced. The policeman on whose beat the Nathan mansion was, swore that he had tried the front door at 5 o'clock and found it fastened. A bright little newspaper boy who was evidently possessed of much quicker intelligence than the policeman, swore, on the contrary, that when folding his papers on Mr. Nathan's stoop, opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, as he did every morning, he was surprised to notice that the door was a little way open. The officer was so stupid that when, on his return beat, he heard the cries of murder from the two sons standing in their night gear on the stoop, all he did when he went upstairs and saw the murdered man lying by the door between the rooms was to take up the carpenter's dog, which he should not have touched until the arrival of the Coroner. Other witnesses whose faces and voices rose before us as we looked at Mr. Nathan's monument were Dr. Peckham, his next neighbor, who deposed to the noises which he and his wife heard in the night, and was much affected while giving his testimony.

The kind old gentlemen felt deeply the fate of his friend. General Blair, who was staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, testified, if we remember, to seeing a man running in the early morning. Workmen had been repairing the house and Mr. Nathan, who was staying at his country seat in New Jersey, had only come to New York for one night to attend some special service in the Synagogue of Sherish Israel. Washington Nathan testified with perfect candor that he had spent the earlier part of the evening with a gay woman who was also called as a witness. His father had not occupied his usual room but had a bed prepared for himself in the second floor front parlor. As Washington passed upstairs at midnight his father asked if it were he and he told him there was a jug of ice water if he needed any. That was the last time he overheard his voice, for he and his brother slept heavily, as young men often do, and heard no sound on the floor below them during the night. it was when one of them went downstairs in the morning that the murder of their father was discovered.

The old housekeeper who slept downstairs had heard nothing and clearly knew nothing. One witness only riveted our attention, yet the coroner and lawyers seemed to take small notice of him. He was the housekeeper's son and every word had to be squeezed from him. A heavy, leaden dogged look sat on his face which was by no means a pleasant one to look at. He knew the safe and the cash box within it from which Mr. Nathan had sometimes taken money in his presence and given it to him to pay bills or make purchases with. He did not know how much Mr. Nathan kept in it. This coroner's inquiry lasted some few days and an episode in it was the dramatic intervention of the late George Jones, the Count Johannes, who claimed to make remarks at intervals as being a counselor at law of the Supreme Court. No suggestion of the arrest of the housekeeper's son, or anyone else, was made. He was not asked what company he kept or if he had ever spoken in barrooms of Mr. Nathan's safe and cash box, according to the writer's recollection. No ingenuity, such as Edgar Allan Poe would have put into a lawyer's or detective's head, was shown by any one. The fact that Mr. Nathan had been murdered on the night of July 29, which everybody knew beforehand, was all that was elicited.

There are Hebrews and Hebrews. Mrs. Nathan, the widow, who died in 1879, was, like her husband, true to the strict traditions of Jewish orthodoxy, so much so that in her will she excluded from inheritance any son who should abandon the faith of Israel or marry one who did not hold it. Many of the highest and wealthiest Jews have, of late years, relaxed their code. Lord Rosebery, Mr. Gladstone's right bower, married Miss Hannah Rothschild, daughter of Sir Lionel. Others of the Hebrew race and creed have married Christians, though the instances are not many. In some few cases Christian maidens have become daughters of Judah to wed Jewish husbands. Sometimes whole families, like the great musical family of the Mendelssohus, have become Christians. Such conversions from one creed to another are generally matters of expediency, the subject thinking that the essentials of religion are the same in all.

There are still a great number of Jews whose phylactery is as exact as ever, and who observe with punctuality not only the moral but the ceremonial laws of Moses. The great Hebrew prophets were the first Broad Churchmen, but many synagogues are as exclusive as Calvinistic Orthodoxy is among Christians. An instance of this occurred the other day in Brooklyn, when Mr. Liebman, of the firm of Loeser & Co., was objected to as a likely representative of the Hebrew element of our population in the Board of Education, on the ground that although a Jew he was not an Orthodox one. An increasing number both of Jews and Christians are theists, free thinkers and rationalists. The congregation of the Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham, in New York a few years ago, was mainly composed Jews, and his successor, Felix Adler, is a Jewish rabbi. Plymouth Church is largely attended by Jews, who like Mr. Beecher's agnosticism as to positive faith.

But all Jews agree in the "cultus" of the dead by religious observances and sepulture. No Hebrew rabbi would care to officiate as the Rev. Drs. Farley and Putnam conscientiously did a short time since at the cremation of a departed friend. Joseph, and Moses after him, learned the burial rite in Egypt, and out of Egypt, by way of Judea, the custom came to Christendom, the "Galilee of the Gentiles." At the cremation of Harry E. Dodge, at Mount Olivet Cemetery, according to his compact with his friend, Charles H. Wheeler, some may have recalled the words of Cicero in his "Cato Major," cujus corpus a me crematum est. So far as resurrection goes, it cannot matter, for, as the greatest of all Jewish converts to Christianity has said, "there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." Personally, cremation seems to some of us the more excellent way of disposing of the useless and deserted tenement. The chief horror of death has always seemed to them the paraphernalia of the funeral, the closed coffin, and the narrow house. When the "I" that was the living soul is fled, why keep the body to corrupt the ground? But we have been amazed at the number of persons, especially of the old, who look upon corruption in the grave with tranquility, but shudder at the thought of being changed by purifying fires, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

The Jews will still bury their dead and lie down to the last sleep in families, as they have lived. May Ezekiel's vision come to pass in every valley of dry bones tenanted by this immortal race, which has given such inspiration, philanthropy and genius to the world. Among these valleys and these hills cypress we noticed many names familiar as household words in the commercial circles of New York and Brooklyn. Here is the family plot of the Abrahams, who came from England, and here also are families of the ancient race who came from Germany and from almost every land. The race and faith of the Montefiores and the Rothschilds is worthy to survive. The songs of Sion are now heard in all lands and the laws of S8nai have given juris-prudence to Christendom.

RECLUSE.