II., 1861) portray the milieu in which our author grew up and developed.
[Footnote 1: See next note.] [Footnote 2: Both titles are derived from the message in Josh.15.

15, according to which _Debir_, a city in the territory of the tribe of Judah, was originally called _Kiriat Sefer_, "Book City."] Abraham Baer Lebensohn, [1] a native of Vilna, awakened the dormant Hebrew lyre by the sonorous rhymes of his "Songs in the Sacred Tongue" (_Shire Sefat Kodesh_, Vol.

I., Leipsic, 1842).

In this volume solemn odes celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of a philosophical content.

The unaccustomed ear of the Jew of that period was struck by these powerful sounds of rhymed biblical speech which exhibited greater elegance and harmony than the Mosaid of Wessely, the Jewish Klopstock.