bring thee down, saith the Lord.'* 'As thou hast done, far, that he gathered, when in his own last agony, a it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon multitude of the most distinguished Jews, imploring his thine own head.'t And, within a year or two of the || successors to see them wantonly destroyed, that he same time, Ezekiel declares, Behold, saith the Lord might enjoy in death the rapture of bequeathing to the God, oh, Mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will house of Jacob a horrid legacy of tears and blood. The make thee most desolate. Sith thou hast not hated taste for the grandest architectural displays in new pablood, blood shall pursue thee. Edom, her kings and laces, temples, theatres and cities, for which this Iduall her princes, shall lie with the uncircumcised and mean was so distinguished that Augustus Cæsar prowith them that go down into the pit.' 'As thou didst nounced his soul too great for his kingdom-the extrarejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because ordinary taste I speak of, seems still farther to identify it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be him with magnificent but malevolent Edom. His sons, of course, also Edomites, were also persecutors of the desolate, oh, Mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it; race of Jacob, through their virulence against the great and they shall know that I am the Lord.'¶ object of its preservation, our blessed Saviour. One of them was the slayer of John, the Baptist, for reproving his libertinism; and it was to him, also, as having jurisdiction over that part of the country whence our Saviour came, that Pontius Pilate sent him in the hope that he might thus be screened from the mob. No doubt Pilate may also have known that the Herod in question had those secret longings for regal sway in Judea, which

Part of Mrs. Huntley's visitors appeared somewhat impatient under all these texts. One of the gentlemen. ironically expatiated on the advantage of getting two Sundays in a week, besides a missionary sermon, without a call from the collection plate. Mrs. Huntley seemed distressed at the merriment, and very emphatically thanked her pastor for his information.

soon afterwards were avowed and with success. Hence

Pilate may have meant to mingle a favoring hint to HeSaviour. But the blood of Esau rejected the opportunirod with his direct purpose of friendliness towards our

Philosophy has never yet been able to explain how it happens that important trains of thought sometimes open on us most vividly at moments which appear least fitted for them. The first dawning of a truth which may change the character, is sometimes under circumstances which would seem to render such impressions impossi-ty of being merciful to the only source of mercy. Still ble; while the regular opportunities for them flow by for years unregarded. The poet may have seen instances of this nature, who observed,

A verse may find him who a sermon flies:
And turn delight into a sacrifice."-

George Herbert, 1660.

It was evident that the mind of Mrs. Huntley was aroused to a spirit of inquiry upon matters to which she had, as yet, given little or no attention.

Mr. Burton remarked that the Edomites must have ⚫been a very enlightened as well as proud people; that the scene of the book of Job is placed in that country and that learned men think the book itself might have been the work of some of its native authors, translated by Moses into Hebrew. "Job himself," added Mr. Burton, "is said to have been one of the early kings of Edom. If all these conjectures can be sustained, it gives the recent discoveries a peculiar charm."

"What became of the Edomites after these prophecies, Mr. Westbrook ?" asked Mrs. Huntley.

"The last prophecy," said the clergyman, "bears date about five hundred and eighty-seven years before the Christian era. After various fortunes in frequent and bloody wars, they were subdued by the Jews about one hundred and twenty-five years before Christ. They became in some degree identified with the Jewish nation. The Herod who was ruler in Judea when our Saviour came into the world; the jealous and malignant Herod, who dreaded the prophecy of a king expected to be born among the descendants of Jacob for the country of which he himself was then master, and who, therefore, ordered a sweeping massacre of the male children of that hated race, making sure, among them, to effect the murder of the holy infant; this Herod was an Edomite: he, too, it was, who carried the rancor of the sons of Esau so

persisting in the dark spirit of the 'people of the curse,'
'Herod, with his men of war, set him at nought, and
mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and
sent him again to Pilate'* as a rival in royalty who gave
him no concern. What can be more appalling than
this climax of the wanton malice of the race of Esau,
defying, through all ages, to the very last the race of
his brother Jacob, and in continual and in mad defiance
of every reiterated warning? There is a Jewish tradi-
tion, too, that Titus, under whom Jerusalem was crush-
ed, also sprang from the same origin; that he, also, was
an Edomite. Thus was the hostility between the race
of Esau and that of Jacob, kept up to the end, and at the
end 'cursed was he that had cursed Jacob.' Before the
sacking of Jerusalem by Titus, a party of Edomites got
off, laden with booty. No traces of them were disco-
verable, and from that moment, the name of the Edom-
ites as a people has no longer appeared upon the page of
history. Their forsaken country soon fell into the hands
of the descendants of Esau's brother-in-law, the elder
son of Ishmael. It afterwards underwent other revolu-
tions, and Petra was noted centuries later under the
Romans and became, at one time, the seat of a Chris-
tian church. But nearly a thousand years ago all me-
mory of it vanished; and it had even ceased to be made
a subject of inquiry, when the recent travellers already
mentioned, by mere chance, found it again in the keeping
of the Ishmaelite kinsmen of Esau-and, what is still
more striking, found in it, upwards of two thousand five
hundred years after the prophecy of Isaiah, an entire
realization of his terrible picture :† the cormorant and
bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall
dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of
confusion, and the stones of emptiness. They shall
call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be
there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns

shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in | deviated into the depravities and errors which deteriothe fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation for ate human nature, or obstruct its progress. Each has dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the advanced in triumph, while it was benefiting mankind; desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, each has fallen when it had accomplished all its useful and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl purposes; and a more improving one has been raised also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. up and led into predominance in its stead.' If our own There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and country should ever invite this fate, it is not to be averhatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the ted by mere shouts among ourselves for our superior vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate. blessings as a people, our liberty as citizens and our Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read; no one of enlightened happiness as men! We must not hope these shall fail!' to see the blow averted, till we lay aside that vindictive contemptuousness whence ruin springs, and which is assure to fall upon America, if she deserve it, as it ever was in days of yore upon the now extinguished Edomites, the Red men of the East."

"By-the-way, Mr. Westbrook," observed Miss Caldwell, "you told me you had something to say about our own Red men, of which you wished me to remind you; though I should vastly like in the first place, to know what became of these same Red men of the East, you speak of, who, in that magnificent city, 'set their nest among the stars' and 'dwelt, like the eagle, in the clefts of the rock.'"

"Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read; no one of these shall fail!" unconsciously echoed Mrs. Huntley. "And for what purposes we should read," remarked Mr. Burton, "I heard very cloquently enforced the other Sunday evening by a clergyman in Amity street, not far from your house, Mrs. Huntley. From the denunciation of Zephaniah* against the Jews for disregarding the prophecy-the passage where he cries-Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city! she obeyed not the voice; she received not instruction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God;' the preacher drew a most impressive argument. No one could have departed "Both your wishes,' answered Mr. Westbrook, from that discourse unconvinced that the comparison may possibly be complied with at once, Miss Caldwell. between prophecy and its fulfilment, is meant for someYou will remember that a party of the Red men of the thing far beyond the mere satisfaction of curiosity; and East, the Edomites, escaped with booty before the sackthat its warnings point not to an age, but to all time.' ing of Jerusalem, and have never since been heard of.* No one could have heard, without deeply hoping Now these Red men had been extensively engaged in that at a crisis when it may be so vitally important, our commerce. The very circumstance of their name, after own republic may be led to think upon the lessons of their nation had been extinguished, remaining indelibly prophecy, to obey the voice,' and to 'receive instruc-impressed upon the sea around their coast, the Red sea, tion.'"

"Ah, Mr. Burton," said Miss Duane, "I've found you out. I saw you going into that quaker-looking white church one evening, to escape a shower; and there it was you picked up your religious knowledge, which has so puzzled us all."

This account was true enough; and Mr. Burton had really been thus accidentally directed to the studies by which he had surprised his fashionable friends. From chances of this sort, much good often comes, when least looked for.

"I am delighted," resumed Mr. Westbrook, "when I find intelligent minds taking such a course at a time like this. Are instances to be found among us of systematically laughing counsel to scorn, either with the tongue or with the pen? Of stifling freedom of opinion by intimidation? Of subduing minds to a spirit of caution and masquerade in social intercourse which makes it hollow and insincere? Of answering even a suspicion that doubtful deeds are looked upon with thinking eyes, by the scourge, the butcher's-knife or the scaffold? If cases even approaching such have ever been tolerated among us, we have been untrue to ourselves, and our republic is in danger. 'You will find it,' observes a most valuable writer, to be a law of national providence, repeatedly put into action, that every prosperous nation, as every inculcated system, however powerful, and successful, and improved during the time of its enlargement and influence, has been checked, as soon as it has

66

in itself seems an indication that their alliance with that sea must have been somewhat intimate. 'They were,' says an able writer in the North American Review,† 'the carriers of the rich produce of the East between the Red Sea and the ports of the Phoenicians. Under the Romans the trade of these regions appears to have become still more extensive and prosperous. The country was rendered more accessible and the passage of merchants and caravans was facilitated, by military ways, and by the establishment of military posts, to keep in check the plundering hordes of the neighboring deserts.' They occupied the naval stations of Elath and Eziongeber on the Arabian gulf; and if Columbus could see any plausible foundation for his theory that the gold for the temple of Jerusalem had been taken from the New World which he had found, surely there can be nothing outrageous in supposing that the remnants of a doomed race at a crisis of its extremest peril, might avail themselves of their long existing maritime facilities by escaping at least as far as the merchants of Solomon had ventured in pursuit of gold. Indeed, their fathers were under the yoke of Solomon when the temple was built, and who can say that some of them might not have been, at that time, by these very gold dealing merchants taught the way to what we call the New World? There are gigantic ruins of lost cities in Mexico and South America, not to be traced back to any race now known, even in tradition. These discoveries in the West have been almost cotemporaneous with

Introduction to Bagster's Comprehensive Bible, p. 93.
See the North American Review, for April, 1837-p. 411.

"I thought," observed Mr. Goldenquill, “that you all lations. He had made a vow that he would be the knew Judge Durkins had been shot by an Indian."

"An Indian! How came that?"

richest man in America. Losses have lately increased around him in the most extraordinary and unaccounta ble manner. A commercial house holding an immense amount of his money has failed. A fire has swept away the best part of a new town that he was building. His paper to a vast amount has been protested. His family are left beggars. The whole storm burst at once upon his wife, at the very moment she thought herself the wealthiest woman in the world."

"And how has Mrs. Durkins borne it, father," asked Mrs. Huntley, tremulously and in tears. "She was taken this afternoon to the Lunatic Asylum."

The party broke up, all in a very serious mood. Some of them were more than ordinarily impressed with the discussions and occurrences which had engaged their evening's attention; and Mr. Goldenquill, being unusually gloomy for him, as he walked home with Miss Caldwell, to whom he is said to be paying court, re

"Who looks upon this world, and not beyond it
To the abodes it leads to, must believe it
The bloody slaughter house of some ill power
Rather than the contrivance of a good one.
Ev'ry thing here breeds misery to man;
The sea breeds storms to sink him: If he flies
To shore for aid, the shore breeds rocks to tear him :
The earth breeds briars to rend him, trees to hang him;
Those things that seem his friends, are false to him:
The air that gives him breath, gives him infection;
Meat takes his health away, and drink his reason:
His reason is so great a plague to him,
He never is so pleas'd, as when he's robb'd on't
By drink or madness,"
John Crown, 1679.

"He was riding in the Indian country and a rifle from behind a log took him down without warning and he was dead before his companion could get to him." "Those villanous Indians," exclaimed another gentleman, "nothing is too bad for them. Think of this cold-blooded murder! There is no such thing as ever bringing them to reason. We can have no security, till all their throats are cut." "Soft," observed Mr. Goldenquill. "I may, perhaps, give you some clue to this affair, which may make you think less ungently of the Indians. Judge Durkins had become immensely wealthy all of a sudden upon speculations in Indian lands. There has been a new style of fraud practised among these wronged people, by which it is said he was a vast gainer. Vagabond Indians are made drunk and hired to personate owners of lands, which they transfer for a trifle before a government agent, who gives a title which the gov-peated the following lines to her: ernment's power is from that moment bound to protect. A few dollars have in this way often purchased what has forthwith been sold for many thousands. A graceful and interesting young widow, accompanied by a child of some three years old, went to the Judge to remonstrate against a fraud of this nature, by which he had obtained all her possessions. She was spurned from the door. He was scarcely gone, when a purse of gold was missed. An officious borderer followed the female, charged her with the theft, gathered a party of vagabond accomplices, tied her to a tree and led the way to scourge her into a confession. She uttered neither word nor groan. When released, she caught Proving that love, though blind, is wonderfully her child in her arms and shot out of sight, her wounds streaming, into the forest On the following day she was discovered, drowned, in the river, her stiffened arms clasping her dead child to her bosom. The purse which had contained the gold, was afterwards accidentally seen in the possession of the borderer, who was in a few months caught in a crime at the Havanna; and, before he was executed, confessed that he had committed the theft for which he had punished the Indian widow. The Indians, however, regarded the Judge as the real slayer. Their law of retaliation is the one to which they cling most pertinaciously. This is supposed among numerous other co-incidences of customs to mark their Mosaic origin. The nearest relation must be the avenger of blood. Doubtless it was by the hand of some connection of the Indian widow and her child, that Judge Durkins perished."

"And is not this a proof that Providence does not forget the wronger of the Indian ?" cried Mr, Burton.

"Who," exclaimed Mrs. Huntley, "could sleep in peace, possessing wealth acquired by means like this!" The father of Mrs. Huntley entered the room. "Clara," said Mr. Wilson, "have you heard the strange news?"

CHAPTER III.

sharp sighted.

"Fortitude is not the appetite
Of formidable things, nor inconsult
Rashness; but virtue fighting for a truth;
Deriv'd from knowledge of distinguishing
Good or bad causes,"
Thomas Nabbes, 1640,

A strange confusion disturbed the generally careless and cheerful spirits of Mrs. Huntley. Invitations were already distributed for her very splendid ball, which was now to take place in about a fortnight; and occasions of this sort were usually full of excitement to her. But she seemed to look upon the one she was now preparing with reluctance and distaste. Always, before this, she had exulted in opportunities of out-dashing the other fashionable ladies; but, at present, her meditations were involuntarily turning, not upon her dress and the decorations of her gala; but upon serious subjects which she had neglected; and every day some failure in business among her husband's friends, aroused her sympathies and conducted her to give comfort to their wives.

The sudden paleness of her husband, which was mentioned in the last chapter, had fastened itself upon

"What news, father? Do you mean the death of her mind. She fancied he seemed abstracted and Judge Durkins?"

"I mean worse than that, my dear. Almost at the same time when the news came of the murder, his whole establishment here was put under seizure. His successes had lured him into enormous specu

harassed. He appeared to get thinner and to stay more away from her than usual, as if the silent scrutiny of her affection pained him. She knew that he was deeply devoted to her, though she had no idea how exclusively he was given up to his pride in consulting her gratifica

tions, and in seeing her delighted with society and the operation of events and conversations upon the society delighting in her. mind and conduct, until time and minuter observation Mr. Wilson came in and found his daughter, to his enables us to trace every link of the chain, and then surprise, reading Mason's Treatise on Self-knowledge. how beautifully consistent and searching the system He made no remark upon it; but observed, "Clara, ||which discloses itself, and how beneficent! what strange creatures those foreigners are! Let them once get a whim in their heads and they will leave nothing unattempted until they gain their point. They think we are a mere nation of traders, and that we will do any thing for money."

"To what do you allude, father?"

"I was at Tomlinson, Barker and Co's., countingroom just now. They are that Spanish Nobleman's

"O, all preparing providence divine!

In thy large book what secrets are enroll'd!
What sundry helps doth thy great pow'r assign
To prop the course which thou intend'st to hold!
What mortal sense is able to define

Thy mysteries, thy counsels manifold!
It is thy wisdom strangely that extends
Obscure proceedings to uncertain ends!"
Michael Drayton, 1637.

CHAPTER IV.

agents the one you meet about at parties, you know- Showing better reasons for loving women than beWell. The Grandee has fallen desperately in love with

"Not me, I hope," said Mrs. Huntley, "for if I were ever so single, I couldn't return the compliment."

"No, with your diamonds! Barker laughed heartily when he told me he had been authorized to offer twenty. five thousand dollars for them."

"No bad speculation," replied Mrs. Huntley, with a smile.

"And the Spaniard declares he must have them; so you had better take care, or you'll be obliged to make the sale in spite of yourself."

Some conversation followed upon the state of the times. Mr. Wilson said there were some twenty failures that morning. Mrs. Huntley shuddered.

"Father, tell me honestly. Have you noticed how Charles changes of late? Is he apprehensive of any trouble ?"

"Oh, I should think not, my dear. There's no house in New-York more substantial than his."

The return of Mr. Huntley stopped the conversation. His wife sportively related to him the bargain she had been offered. He seemed concerned and even vexed.

"You must wear the diamonds at Mrs. Thompson's next Thursday evening, Clara, and let the Spaniard see that an American merchant can exult as proudly in adorning his wife with the style to which her virtues give her a title, as any Grandee in the court of Spain." "Charles, these displays are getting more and more irksome to me. Besides, when there is so much trouble abroad, it seems to me not entirely right to go to parties, with so much pomp. Indeed, I almost wish there were no parties at all, just now."

"No parties, Clara!"

"Yes, Charles. When we see ruin in shapes so varied and mysterious and rolling upon us on every side like an encircling avalanche, it appears to me that we are bound to, at least, inquire whether there is not something in the conduct of each and all of us, which demands a change. You recollect what Mr. Westbrook said about covetousness and idolatry? Scripture tells us what we ought to do in cases like those which are hourly accumulating around us; and nations who have neglected such warnings, have mourned their callousness deeply and for ever."

“My love, I hope you are not getting superstitious?" "I hope not, Charles; but I cannot help remembering the talk that evening about prophecy and the discoveries at Petra."

How very capricious and aimless at first seems to us

cause they are handsome.

"Oh, who would abuse

Your sex, which truly knows ye! O, women
Were we not born of ye? should we not then
Honor ye? nurs'd by ye, and not regard ye?
Made for ye, and not seek ye? and since we
Were made before ye, should we not love and
Admire ye as the last, and therefore perfect'st work
Of nature? Man was made, when nature was
But an apprentice,* but woman, when she
Was a skilful mistress of her art; therefore
Cursed is he that doth not admire those
Paragons, those models of heav'n, angels
On earth, goddesses in shape: by their loves
We live in double breath, even in our
Offspring after death. Are not all vices
Masculine, and virtues feminine? are
Not the muses the loves of the learned?
Do not all noble spirits follow the graces,
Because they are women? there's but one phoenix,
And she's a female: is not the princess
And foundress of good arts, Minerva, born
Of the brain of the highest Jove, a woman?
Have not these women the face of love, the
Tongue of persuasion, the body of delight?
O, divine perfection'd woman, whose praises
No tongue can full express, for that the matter
Doth exceed the labor! O, if to be
A woman be so excellent, what is
It then to be a woman enrich'd by
Nature, made excellent by education,
Noble by birth, chaste by virtue, adorn'd
By beauty a fair woman, which is the
Ornament of heaven, the grace of earth,
The joy of life, and the delight of all sense,
Ev'n the very summum bonum of man's life."

John Crown, 1616.

THE husband of Mrs. Thompson failed before Thursday, so there was no party, and the question of the diamonds was at rest. Mrs. Huntley, in the meantime, had become unusually meditative and studious. She had written a note to her father; and we will break into the midst of their conversation, after he had got

to her :

"His sobs awoke me. His face was bathed with tears. He pretended it was a dream he had had, but he had evidently not been sleeping for hours. You must find out for me, father. I have no dread of a change of fortune. I feel within myself a change, which will give me energy to sustain whatever may come. But to the agony of suspense and of knowing that my husband suffers and will not make me the confidante of his woes, I grant, dear father, to this I am not equal."

With much difficulty Mrs. Huntley drew from her father that the many recent failures had, perhaps, a little straitened Mr. Huntley's house, but not seriously.

* If Burns never saw these lines, how very extraordinary is the co-incidence between them and his famous couplet; "Her prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O!"