length into one physiognomic expression, which whenever the counterpart is obtruded on our notice in the sphere of our own experience, may be at once recognized, and enable us to convince ourselves of the identity by a com parison of feature with feature.

The passage commences with a fact, which to the inexperienced might well seem strange and improbable; but which being a truth nevertheless of our own knowledge, is the more striking and charateristic. Worthless persons of little or no estimation for rank, learning, or integrity, not seldom profligates, with whom debauchery has outwrestled repacity, easy. because unprincipled and generous because dishonest, are suddenly cried up as men of enlarged views and liberal sentiments, our only genuine patriots and philanthropists: and churls, that is, men of sullen tempers and surly demeanor; men tyrannical in their families, oppressive and troublesome to their dependents and neighbours, and hard in their private dealings between man and man; men who clench with one hand what they have grasped with the other; these are extolled as public benefactors, the friends, guardians, and advocates of the poor! Here and there

indeed we may notice an individual of birth

and fortune

(For great estates enlarge not narrow minds)

who has been duped into the ranks of incendiaries and mob-sycophants by an insane restlessness, and the wretched ambition of figuring as the triton of the minows. Or we may find perhaps a professional man of shewy accomplishments but of a vulgar taste, and shallow acquirements, who in part from vanity, and in part as a means of introduction to practice, will seek notoriety by an eloquence well calculated to set the multitude agape, and excite gratis to overt-acts of sedition or treason which he may afterwards be fee'd to defend! These however are but exceptions to the general rule. Such as the Prophet has described, such is the sort of men; and in point of historic fact it has been from men of this sort, that profaneness is gone forth into all the land. (Jeremiah, xxiii. 15.)

In harmony with the general character of these false prophets, are the particular qua lities assigned to them. First, a passion for vague and violent invective, an habitual and inveterate predilection for the language of

hate, and rage and contumely, an ungoverned appetite for abuse and defamation! THE VILE

WILL TALK VILLAINY.

But the fetid flower will ripen into the poisonous berry, and the fruits of the hand follow the blossoms of the slanderous lips. HIS HEART WILL WORK INIQUITY. That is, he will plan evil, and do his utmost to carry his plans into execution. The guilt exists already; and there wants nothing but power and opportunity to condense it into crime and overt-act. He that hateth his brother is a

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murderer! says St. John and of many and various sorts are the brother-haters, in whom this truth may be exemplified. Most appropriately for our purpose, Isaiah has selected the fratricide of sedition, and with the eagle eye and practised touch of an intuitive demonstrator he unfolds the composition of the character, part by part, in the secret history of the agent's wishes, designs and attempts, of his ways, his means, and his ends. The agent himself, the incendiary and his kindling combustibles, had been already sketched by Solomon, with the rapid yet faithful outline of a master in the art: The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness and the end of his talk mischievous madness.' Eccle

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siastes, x. 13. If in the spirit of Prophecy,* the wise Ruler had been present to our own times, and their procedures; if while he sojourned in the valley of vision he had actually heard the very harangues of our reigning demagogues to the convened populace;

*Solomon has himself informed us, that beyond wealth and conquest, and as of far greater importance to him, in his arduous office of King and Magistrate, he had sought through knowledge of wisdom to lay hold on folly: that is, by the study of Man, to arrive at a grounded knowledge of Men, and through a previous insight into the nature and conditions of Good to acquire by inference a thorough comprehension of the Evil that arises from its deficiency or perversion. And truly in all points of 'prudence, public and private, we may accommodate to the Royal Preacher his own words: (Ecclesiastes, ii. 12.) What can the man say that cometh after the King? Even that which hath been said already.

In a preceding page we have interpreted the fifth trumpet in the Apocalypse, of the Zelotæ during the siege of Jerusalem: to the Romans therefore, and their Oriental Allies, we must refer the sounding of the sixth Angel, in this sublime and magnificent drama acted in Heaven, before the whole Host of Heaven, the personal Friend of the Incarnate God attending as the Representative of Human Nature, and in her behalf looking and listening with fearful awe to the prophetic symbols of her destiny! But had I dared imitate the major part of the Commentators, and followed the fatuous fires of FANCY, that "shrewd sprite" ever busiest when in the service of pre-conceived partialities and antipathies, I

could he have more faithfully characterized either the speakers or the speeches? Whether in spoken or in printed Addresses, whether in periodical Journals or in yet cheaper implements of irritation, the ends are the same, the process is the same, and the same is their general

might have suffered my judgment to be seduced by the wonderful (apparent) aptness of the symbols, (many of them at least) and extended the application of the first eleven verses to the whole chapter, the former as treating of the Demagogues exclusively, the latter as including their infatuated followers likewise. For what other images, concorporated according to the rules of Hieroglyphic Syntax, could form more appropriate and significant exponents of a seditious and riotous multitude, with the mob-orators, their Heads or Leaders, than the thousands of pack-horses (jumenta sarcinaria) with heads resembling those of a roaring wild beast, with smoke, fire and brimstone (that is, empty, unintelligible, incendiary, calumnious, and offensively foul language) issuing from their mouths? For their power is in their Mouths and in their Tails; and they have Heads, and by means of them they do hurt.'

The authenticity of this canonical Book rests on the firmest grounds, both of outward testimony and internal evidence. But it has been most strangely abused and perverted from the Millenarians of the primitive Church. to the religious Politicians of our own times. My own conception of the Book is, that it narrates in the broad and inclusive form of the ancient Prophets (i. e. in the prophetic power of faith and moral insight irradiated by inspiration) the successive struggles and final triumph of