OF OTHER NATIONS. 29 as well as obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the flute, to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens, when danger or dissension is actually impending.'* The modern Italian improvisatore, too, can utter verse extempore; and such was the rhythm of Grattan's first speech in the English House of Commons, that we are told (in Lord Holland's Memoirs) that Mr. Pitt beat time to the artificial but harmonious cadence of his periods.' And Mr. Lecky says of Shiel's speeches that they seem exactly to fulfil Burke's description of perfect oratory, half poetry and half prose.'t Even in the actual utterance of their discourses the Hebrew prophets must have come very near the rhythmical form of their written works: and with whatever mixture of simple or even rude prose we suppose them to have spoken, we see that they afterwards recorded the substance of their discourses in literary compositions, which for their careful editing may be better compared with Burke's pamphlets than with his merely reported speeches; while their eminently poetical thoughts and imagery, as well as diction, may remind us of the free blank verse in which Shakspeare idealises spoken discourse, as contrasted with the more restricted movement of Milton or Spenser. following passage, too, may throw some light on the subject. 'My pamphlet was composed as for an oration before an assembly, and flowed straight from my heart, and hence it must be read like a speech. Any one who should read it to himself, or aloud, without modulating his voice, in a uniform tone, like a treatise that is merely concerned with ideas, would probably be as much puzzled with it as the ordinary reader is with Greek orations .. particularly those in Thucydides, before he has learnt to read with the ear. The Most of our authors do not in the least know and consider, that the old prose * History of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 100, 110. + The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, p. 257. ISAIAH I. 2— -9. 35 STATE OF THE NATION. writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; whilst among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone, at least only for the ear in the case of an easy narrative. This is why my style is found so strange and unusual, and hence punctuation is so difficult to me, for I ought to have many more signs in order to indicate my exact intentions. In fact, with all that the writer composes as if he were speaking, the character of the movement, and the time, ought to be marked, as in music, for the ordinary reader.'* I suspect this is the key to the music of our English Bible and Prayer Book. It also illustrates the Masoretic accentuation, of which I have spoken above. Let us turn to the matter of the prophecy. The heavens and earth are constant to the constitution and laws imposed on them by their Creator, and to them does Jehovah appeal against a nation who have ceased to believe in any moral order or government of the world :† the dullest animals show an attachment to their owner's person, and a recognition of his manner of caring for them, though he keeps them only for his own profit; but this people disregard and set at nought their filial relation to Jehovah, though he has chosen them out from all mankind to be his own children, bestowed on them the peculiar care and love of a father, reared them to man's estate by making them a nation, and by a long education qualified them to understand as well as to enjoy the blessings of this adoption. They have made themselves like those beasts of burden, loading themselves with their Niebuhr's Life and Letters, vol. i. Lowth here quotes Psalm 1. 3, 4, Micah vi. 1, 2, Deut. xxxii. 1, and Deut. xxx. 19; and Gesenius Virgil's 'Esto nunc Sol testis, et hæc mihi Terra vocanti,' &c.-En. xii. 176. To which may be added the appeal of Prometheus,— And Hamlet's 6 στο δῖος αἰθήρ, καὶ ταχύπτεροι πνοαί, Esch. Prom. Vinct. 88. 'O all ye host of heaven, O earth!' All are founded on the same intuitive feeling of the mind, that the works and POLICY OF UZZIAH AND JOTHAM. 31 iniquities; so degenerated are they from their true birthright, that they seem to be evil in their very stock and breed, like the Canaanites and other accursed races ;*'They have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are gone away backward.' Therefore punishment is coming upon the sinful nation, and punishment severe and repeated enough to rouse it from its obstinate rebellion, till, while it is adding new acts of revolt and apostacy, there seems no place left on which to strike again; as it is become thoroughly diseased at heart, it shall suffer outwardly in proportion to its inward insensibility; as there is no soundness, and no desire for soundness within, so shall it sink under the repeated strokes of a foreign invasion which adds fresh wounds to sores already festering, while it longs in vain for a deliverer and a healer. healer. The vision of that woe rises before the prophet's eyes, and he sees all the national fruits of the long and vigorous reigns of Uzziah and Jotham swept away. Uzziah had effectually humbled that old and troublesome enemy of Judah, the Philistines, dismantling their fortified cities, and establishing his own garrisons in their territory: on the opposite side he had reduced the Ammonites to their proper condition of tributaries, from which they had never lost any opportunity of revolting since David conquered them: he had recovered the port of Elath on the Red Sea, rebuilt it, and thus, after an interval of about eighty years, restored to Judah an important share in the commerce of the world and he had strongly fortified Jerusalem, and organised a wellarmed and disciplined militia, 'that went out to war by bands,' that so the people might not be taken from the cultivation of the land and other peaceful occupations : powers of outward nature are an abiding witness for a settled constitution and order in the universe, however overlooked or defied. So Wordsworth in his Ode to Duty, 'Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' Nor should we overlook the contrast of the pantheistic language of the classical parallels, with the distinction between the world and its Maker which is so clear to the Jew that he does not so much assert as assume it as an axiom impossible to doubt. * See below, on chapter xiv. 28. 32 FOREIGN INVASION. except in regular turns. And while by these means 'his name spread abroad, even to the entering in of Egypt, for he strengthened himself exceedingly,' he was no less active in availing himself of the peace he had secured abroad to encourage commerce and agriculture at home, he himself setting an example in the latter which his nobles were not slow to follow he built towers' for the protection of his flocks in the desert' or commons where they pastured, and digged many wells, for he had much cattle both in the low country and in the plains, husbandmen also and vinedressers in the mountains and in Carmel, for he loved husbandry' the re-opening of the port of Elath would not merely have enabled his merchant-ships to supply Judah and Jerusalem with the luxuries of Africa and India, but would have made Judæa the direct natural highway of much of the traffic between those countries and Europe which the Phoenicians carried on by help of trade-caravans, and which would previously have taken a different route; and while trade and agriculture thus filled the land with wealth, Egypt supplied them with horses and chariots and what the reign of Uzziah had begun, that of Jotham, at the end of half a century, was still carrying on.* And now the prophet beholds all overthrown, the cities burned, the cultivated fields and the pastures laid waste, and the whole land devoured, plundered, and devastated, as is the way when foreign and barbarian enemies invade a country, while the inhabitants look on, unable to resist, and Jerusalem itself, the : * 2 Chron. xx, xxvii. "England is become the residence of foreigners and the property of strangers; at the present time there is no Englishman, either earl, bishop, or abbot: strangers all, they prey upon the riches and vitals of England; nor is there any hope of a termination of this misery."-William of Malmsbury, ii. 13. 'Look on thy country, look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced By wasting ruin of the cruel foe. See, see, the pining malady of France, Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, Grotius quotes First Part of King Henry VI. iii. 3. Impius hæc tam culta novalia miles habebit ? JEHOVAH OF HOSTS. 33 only remaining hope, is threatened with siege. Then, by one of those transitions and combinations with which the imagination can throw a gleam of light and beauty over the darkest and most terrific picture, and yet at the same time even heighten its truth and force, the wasted fields seem to the prophet like the vineyards and cucumber gardens at the end of the fruit season, when they are indeed stripped and trampled, and desolate-looking, yet only because the crops have been gathered in for the benefit of the husbandman and the sole surviving capital stands there apparently abandoned by its divine watcher and keeper, like the cottage or lodge—sometimes a temporary booth of branches, or a hammock, but sometimes, no doubt, a stone cottage, such as we see in the like vineyards and gardens in Provence-which sheltered the keeper of the vineyard or garden as long as its fruits could tempt the jackal and the fox, and was then shut up for the season, or left as useless: yet, inasmuch as it is like a besieged city,' it is garrisoned as well as beleaguered, and hope remains within, though desolation is without.* And then the thoughts and images of selfish prosperity and general calamity, of national sins and divine judgments, but of a small remnant saved through and out of all, assume another form, and recall the ancient fate of those cities which were destroyed because Jehovah could not find ten righteous men therein :-'Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah.' Jehovah of hosts, or of armies, is a favourite expression of the Hebrew writers, and especially of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Malachi, by which they recognize him as the universal governor of heaven and earth, who has ordained and constituted the services of men and angels in a wonderful order :' 'His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed Knobel would translate 'like a watch tower,' understanding either a military post or a tower like those which Uzziah built in the wilderness,' and which at once protected and sheltered the flocks which pastured in the open plains round it. D |