Moses, a Jew of Berlin, and one of the most celebrated writers of Germany, who died in that city in the year 1785, at the age of fifty-seven. His first attempt as an author was soon after 1767, when he published a work entitled *Jerusalem*, in which, besides other bold and unjustifiable opinions, he maintains, that the Jews have a revealed law but not a revealed religion; that opinions are not subjects of revelation; and that the only religion of the Jewish nation is that of nature. He acquired great reputation by his *Phaedon*, or Discourses on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, (translated into French 1773, &c.), in which he unfolds this important truth, which is the great foundation of all morality, with the wisdom of an enlightened philosopher united to the attractions of an elegant writer. In consequence of this excellent work, he was styled, by some of the periodical writers, the Jewish Socrates; but he wanted the firmness and the courage of the Grecian philosopher. His timidity, and even pusillanimity, defects too common in speculative men, prevented him from being of any essential service to his nation, of which he might have become the benefactor by being the reformer; whilst the pliancy of his character, and his modest, obliging disposition, gained him the esteem alike of the superstitious and the incredulous. After all, he could never procure admission into Berlin society, or access to the conversation of the king of Prussia. At his death he received from his nation those honours which are commonly paid to their most eminent rabbin. Though Mendelsohn was descended from a respectable family, he was very poor. In early life he entered into a counting-house of his own nation, in which he greatly recommended himself by his capacity and integrity in business; but philosophy and literature soon became his principal occupation; and to the famous Lessing he was indebted for counsels which, without diverting his attention from those pursuits that were necessary to his subsistence, accelerated his progress in his literary career. Even after the death of his benefactor, Mendelsohn retained for him the most sincere regard and the most lively gratitude. But notwithstanding the very strict regimen which he observed, he survived him only a few years, his feeble frame and weak constitution having been gradually undermined by intense application to study.