slain before his face, his eyes put out, and thus the last king of the royal house of David, blind and childless, was led away into a foreign prison. The capture of Jerusalem took place on the ninth day of the fourth month: on the seventh day of the fifth month, (two days on which Hebrew devotion still commemorates the desolation of the city by solemn fast and humiliation,) the relentless Nabuzaradan executed the orders of his master, by levelling the city, the palaces, and the temple, in one common ruin. The few remaining treasures, particularly the two brazen pillars which stood before the temple, were sent to Babylon: the chief priests were put to death, and the rest carried into captivity.

Jeremiah survived to behold the sad accomplishment of all his darkest predictions. He witnessed all the horrors of the famine, and, when that had done its work, the triumph of the enemy. He saw the strong holds of the city cast down, the palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all its courts, its roofs of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or committed to the flames; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant itself, with the cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the feelings of a patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he has left on record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a more miserable fate-never was ruined city lamented in language so exquisitely pathetic.

The miserable remnant of the people were placed under the command of Gedaliah, as a pasha of the great Assyrian monarch: the seat of government was fixed at Mizpeh. Yet ambition could look with envy even on this eminence. Gedaliah was assassinated by Ishmael, a man of royal blood. Johanan attempted to revenge his death. Ishmael, discomfited, took refuge with the Ammonites; but Johanan and the rest of the Jews, apprehensive lest they should be called in question for the murder of Gedaliah, fled to Egypt, and carried Jeremiah with them. There the prophet died; either, according to conflicting traditions, put to death by the Jews, or by King Hophra.

Thus closes the first period of the Jewish history; and, in

the ordinary course of human events, we might expect, the national existence of the Israelitish race. The common oscupancy of their native soil seems, in general, the only tie that permanently unites the various families and tribes which constitute a nation. As long as that bond endures, a people may be sunk to the lowest state of degradation; they may be reduced to a slave-caste under the oppression of foreign invaders; yet favourable circumstances may again develope the latent germ of a free and united nation: they may rise again to power and greatness, as well as to independence. But, when that bond is severed, nationality usually becomes extinct. A people transported from their native country, if scattered in small numbers, gradually melt away, and are absorbed in the surrounding tribes: if settled in larger masses, remote from each other, they grow up into distinct commonwealths; but in a generation or two, the principle of separation, which is perpetually at work, effectually obliterates all community of interest or feeling. If a traditionary remembrance of their common origin survives, it is accompanied by none of the attachment of kindred; there is no family pride or affection; there is no blood between the scattered descendants of common ancestors; for time gradually loosens all other ties habits of life change; laws are modified by the circumstances of the state and people; religion, at least in all polytheistic nations, is not exempt from the influence of the great innovator. The separate communities have outgrown the common objects of national pride; the memorable events of their history during the time that they dwelt together; their common traditions, the fame of their heroes, the songs of their poets, are superseded by more recent names and occurrences; each has his new stock of reminiscences, in which their former kindred cannot participate. Even their languages have diverged from each other. They are not of one speech: they have either entirely or partially ceased to be mutually intelligible. If, in short, they meet again, there is a remote family likeness, but they are strangers in all that connects man with man, or tribe with tribe.

One nation alone, seems entirely exempt from this universal law. During the Babylonian captivity, as in the longer dispersion under which they have been for ages afflicted, the Jews still remained a separate people. However widely divided from their native country, they were still Jews: however remote from each other, they were still brethren. What, then, were the bonds by which Divine Providence held together this single people? What were the principles of their inextinguishable nationality? Their law and their religion. Their law, of the irreversible perpetuity of which they were steadfastly convinced, and to which, at length, they adhered too long and too pertinaciously. Their religion, which, however it might admit of modifications, in its main principles remained unalterable.

Under the influence of these principles, we shall hereafter see the Jewish people resuming their place among the nations of the earth, and opening a new and extraordinary career, to end even in a more awful dissolution.

THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS BY CYRUS.

ESTORATION to their city, and the rebuilding of their temple, had been predicted to the Jews by their prophets. Isaiah had even foretold the name of the sovereign who should accomplish this wonderful event. The narrative is thus given by Josephus, in the eleventh book of his "Antiquities of the Jews."

In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, which was the seventieth from the day that our people were removed out of their own land into Babylon, God commiserated the captivity and calamity of these poor people, according as he had foretold to them by Jeremiah the prophet, before the destruction of the city, that after they had served Nebuchadnezzar and his posterity, and after they had undergone that servi