[Illustration:  GRACE AGUILAR]

The youngest child of a rich and refined household, Grace Aguilar was born in 1816 at Hackney, near London, of that historic strain of Spanish-Jewish blood which for generations had produced not only beauty and artistic sensibility, but intellect.  Her ancestors were refugees from persecution, and in her burned that ardor of faith which persecution kindles.  Fragile and sensitive, she was educated at home, by her cultivated father and mother, under whose solicitous training she developed an alarming precocity.  At the age of twelve she had written a heroic drama on her favorite hero, Gustavus Vasa.  At fourteen she had published a volume of poems.  At twenty-four she accomplished her chief work on the Jewish religion, ‘The Spirit of Judaism,’ a book republished in America with preface and notes by a well-known rabbi, Dr. Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia.  Although the orthodox priest found much in the book to criticize, he was forced to commend its ability.—­It insists on the importance of the spiritual and moral aspects of the faith delivered to Abraham, and deprecates a superstitious reverence for the mere letter of the law.  It presents Judaism as a religion of love, and the Old Testament as the inspiration of the teachings of Jesus.  Written more than half a century ago, the book is widely read to-day by students of the Jewish religion.

Four years later Miss Aguilar published ’The Jewish Faith:  Its Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope,’ and ’The Women of Israel,’ a series of essays on Biblical history, which was followed by ‘Essays and Miscellanies.’  So great was the influence of her writings that the Jewesses of London gave her a public testimonial, and addressed her as “the first woman who had stood forth as the public advocate of the faith of Israel.”  While on her way to visit a brother then residing at Schwalbach, Germany, she was taken ill at Frankfurt, and died there, at the early age of thirty-one.

The earliest and the best known of Miss Aguilar’s novels is ’Home Influence,’ which rapidly passed through thirty editions, and is still a favorite book with young girls.  There is little incident in the story, which is the history of the development of character in a household of six or seven young persons of very different endowments and tendencies.  It was the fashion of the day to be didactic, and Mrs. Hamilton, from whom the “home influence” radiates, seems to the modern reader somewhat inclined to preach, in season and out of season.  But the story is interesting, and the characters are distinctly individualized, while at least one episode is dramatically treated.

‘The Mother’s Recompense’ is a sequel to ‘Home Influence,’ wherein the further fortunes of the Hamilton family are so set forth that the wordly-minded reader is driven to the inference that the brilliant marriages of her children are a sensible part of Mrs. Hamilton’s “recompense.”  The story is vividly and agreeably told.