Such was the state of things that filled the soul of Moses, as he grew to manhood, with burning indignation, and led him, after brooding long in secret over the wrongs of his kinsmen, to stand forth as their champion and avenger. Forty years of grinding servitude were to elapse, and the illfated Hebrews to be steeped in misery to their lips. At length the hour of emancipation struck, and the race of hereditary serfs were to leave the house of bondage as the freemen of Jehovah, to be trained by Him, in the recesses of the Arabian wilderness, as an elect and separated people, the leading-shoot and consecrated priesthood of the world.

The great body of the Hebrews must always have been concentrated in or round Rameses, the chief town of Goshen-a place that had through their labour been converted into a store-city, or arsenal of the Egyptian garrisons that occupied the north-eastern or desert frontier which was most exposed to hostile incursions. The effect of the terrible judgments that in swift succession carried terror and dismay through the land, must have been to have drawn the scattered members of the Hebrew family to Rameses as the place of rendezvous. It was as if Heaven was tolling the great bell of the universe,' loud enough for all ears to hear. The hope of deliverance must have been from week to week confirmed, as tidings of the wondrous exemption of Goshen from the plagues that had devastated the other provinces swelled their numbers by accessions from all parts of the land. The last and most appalling visitation the mark of the Destroying Angel's presence in every Egyptian dwelling- has sifted out the chosen race from their heathen neighbours, and urged on by their panic-stricken oppressors, they begin the first stage of their long and chequered march to freedom. From its vicinity to Memphis, the capital of the Pharaohs, On or Heliopolis, not far from the modern Cairo, has been supposed to be the Rameses of the Exodus, and in this case, the route of the Israelites must have lain nearly due east through the desert ravines that stretch between Cairo and the sea. But the circumstance that On was a priestly city, makes it in the highest degree improbable that the bulk of the Hebrews were settled there. The site of Rameses is probably to be found much further north in Hierapolis, or the neighbourhood of the Salt Lakes, the locality assigned to it by the Jews who settled in Egypt at a later day, and which, as it lay on the direct route from Beersheba, was probably the scene of Joseph's meeting with his father. From this place the line of march was nearly due south to reach the desert of Sinai, by rounding the nearer horn of the Red Sea.

Once beyond the sea they were safe; but great was their amazement, when after leaving Succoth, their first encampment, and reaching the point, Etham on the edge of the wilderness, where they should have struck across the head of the gulf, they were commanded to turn,-to strike deeper into the heart of the Egyptian territory on the nearer side of the sea. A strange movement must this have seemed to them, -a feeble and fatal movement in the judgment of their enemies, who saw them thus plunging blindly into a cul de sac

between the mountains and the sea. Some courier, "bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste,” might have brought the tidings from Etham to Pharaoh, who, now that the first impression of the recent catastrophe was dulled, was repenting his mistake in permitting the whole helotry of his kingdom to escape from his hands. No time was to be lost, and mustering all his war-chariots, his own body-guard, and the flower of his cavalry, for a rapid march, he moved down on the track of the devoted Hebrews, and blocked up the only outlet in the rear. Destruction was inevitable had they been led into this situation by any earthly guide; but just as they are commanded to turn at Etham, the Pillar of Cloud and Fire for the first time appeared gliding slowly before the column to mark its predestined way.

From the fact that there exist at present no materials on the spot for identifying the Scripture localities mentioned in connexion with this critical movement,-Pi-hahiroth, Migdol, and Baal-zephon, there is no hope of determining the scene of the passage with absolute certainty. The most that can be looked for is a strong probability in favour of the view which best satisfies the conditions of the miracle. Two extreme views have been supported by names of weight. One fixes the passage at

the narrow channel that runs up above the town of Suez, and the other at a point forty miles to the south, where the gulf is thirteen miles across. The first of these tries to reduce the miraculous element in the transit to a minimum, by supposing that Moses availed himself of the shoals that are dry at low water, divinely aided by the east wind that blew all night with continuous strength, so as to make the ford practicable. It seems a sufficient objection to this theory, that it cannot be reconciled with the plain statement of Scripture, that "the waters were a wall on the right hand and on the left." A much broader extent of sea would have been required for the movement of such masses of men all the hours of the night. Besides, so near the head of the gulf, the Egyptian warchariots might easily have made a circuit and interrupted the landing of the Hebrews on the other shore.

The other theory must be rejected on the ground that it is impossible to explain how the Israelites journeying from Goshen, could have struck upon the Red Sea at a point so low without pursuing a route which must have seemed hopeless from the very first. Standing on the terraced roofs of Suez, and looking southward over the clear blue expanse of waters, the eye is arrested by the towering form of a mountain cape, steeply impending over the western shore,—the termination of a long rocky ridge which forms a barrier all along the coast. Moving downwards on this promontory, with the sea on the left hand, and the mountain wall on the right, we can understand how Pharaoh could say, with a gleam of triumph in his eye, "They are entangled in the land; the wilderness hath shut them in." Like a herd of startled deer they had rushed into the maze, and every frantic effort would only tighten the meshes of the net. He had but to plant his army in the rear, and the fatal environment was complete.

At this point, then, Jebel Attaka, the "Cape of

Deliverance," as it has been called from time immemorial, the onward march of Israel was suddenly arrested. It was to all appearance a situation of despair. Their trusted leader had brought them into an inextricable dilemma, and in their rage and terror they turn upon him like men betrayed. The last bright gleam of the April sunset was flashed back from a forest of spears and the brazen armour of trampling squadrons. They could hear the low hoarse rattle of the heavy war-chariots thundering on their track, perhaps the exulting shouts of the pursuers ready to swoop down upon their prey. With spirits crushed and broken by oppression, they would rather have perished in bondage, beneath the scourge of their taskmasters, than be trodden down, in their wild, distracted dash at freedom, under the hoofs of a ruthless foe. The terrible suspense was brief; slowly the guiding Pillar rose, and trailed its solemn shadow over the awe-struck masses, till it closed in dense sable folds, and hung like a screen behind them. And then, as the darkness deepened, a pale unearthly radiance streamed from it over all their upturned faces, lighting up the calm features of Moses, as he stood on some rocky ledge with his rod outstretched over the waters. The waters part, as if cloven by some mysterious force, and stand like glistening walls of marble wide asunder, the portentous glare casting its broad, clear illumination over the sloping pathway below-the "depths congealed in the heart of the sea." "Forward!" is the cry that rings through the host; and forward they move in silence, tribe after tribe, with their precious relic, the cedar ark 1 or sarcophagus of Joseph, borne high in the centre of their files-drawing after them, as they wound into the unseen depths, the Egyptians and their prince, frantic at the thought of being baffled once more. Hour after hour of the wondrous nightmarch went by; on the one side the mystic brightness, on the other pitchy gloom. Stillness now in the ranks of Mizraim deep as death, chariots and horsemen blindly plunging forwards, "sounding on their dim and perilous way;" till, in the morning watch, a dread presentiment crept over the Pagan host, and chilled the hearts of the bravest. A lurid and angry fire darted in fitful flashes through the cloudy veil, the darkness seeming to be "with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms,"-some awful Presence there troubling them with signs of wrath and vengeance, their chariots driving heavily,—their ranks thrown back, broken and jostling, in dire confusion,—their arms nerveless, their burning ardour quenched, as if their advance was hindered by some spectral foe.

As the grey morning dawn came in, the last man of the chosen people, the last child who had slept

through the weary march in his mother's arms, was safe on the farther shore; and then, it might be, the wild despairing glance of Pharaoh rested on the figure of the Hebrew leader, as, clear against a background of sky, he once more stretched his rod over the waters. That pathway of deliverance was now an open grave, dug for His enemies by the hand of Jehovah. The pride, and flower, and royalty of Egypt have been brought here for burial. They see the wand of destiny uplifted; the solid waterwalls heave, loosen, and burst, with the roar and plunge of a thousand cataracts, over the devoted host. The shriek of mortal agony is followed by sepulchral stillness; the Egyptians, whom they had seen but yesterday, are to be seen again no more for ever. There remained not so much as one of them.

"The enemy said, I will pursue,

I will overtake, I will divide the spoil;
My lust shall be satisfied upon them;

I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
Thou didst blow with Thy wind;

The sea covered them:

They sank as lead in the mighty waters."

No monument, like that which stood in after days on the bank of Jordan,-the twelve grey mosscrusted stones, which had been wrenched from its bare channel,-was reared on the Red Sea shore. But the Exodus needed none, or rather the dark purple peaks of the Desert, in whose shadows the race of bondmen heard the Law which made them the Elect People of the earth, and bound them in firm and sacr 1 brotherhood by covenant with God,

that Mount Sinai in Arabia, seen from afar by those who cross the waters, became, as it remains, the enduring memorial of their redemption. Full of hallowed interest to the mind of Israel in all future time, the Exodus takes a higher and holier significance to the Christian mind. Type and symbol of divinest import to all who, freed by the Law of Life in Christ Jesus from the bondage of the sinful will and the evil world, are faring onwards, by the rough and flinty track of travail and sore endurance, to a better country, even an heavenly. The sweet vibration of this triumphal ode was in the ear of him who saw the Apocalypse, and heard the victors in the fight with the powers of evil singing, on the sea of glass, the song of Moses to the harps of God. And who can wonder that the grave, melodious strain, which in vision the great religious poet of the medieval time heard the blessed sing in Paradise, was set to the music of the words which, in the deep, rich organ tones of the Latin Psalter, had so often thrilled his heart

"IN EXITU ISRAEL DE EGYPTO."

"Stay you till to-morrow; to-day I go hunting!" Winter is over and gone, at least we persuade ourselves that it is; the day has opened in cloudless glory. "Will it last?" some one endowed with "Of course it the bump of cautiousness asks. will, for are not we going anemone-hunting?" However, to make all sure, we can put umbrellas

and a half before it will be at its lowest point, and an immense breadth of soft wet sand lies exposed. We pause for a moment to gaze on the boundary to the right. It is Berry Head, a noble headland that projects like a long wall far out into the sea, and presents its bluff termination, crowned with fortifications, to the impact of the waves that drive in with impotent fury from the wide Atlantic.

"All agog,

To dash through thick and thin."

But what need of a carriage, seeing I reside at Marychurch, with a capital shore, varied with | cove and headland and cliff, with sand and shingle and boulders and rocky ledges, all round me, approached at several points by half-an-hour's easy walk? Ah! gentle reader, I'll whisper a secret in your ear; but don't tell that I said so, for 'tis high treason against the ladies. Since the opening of sea-science to the million, such has been the invasion of the shore by crinoline and collecting jars, that you may search all the likely and promising rocks within reach of Torquay, which a few years ago were like gardens with full-blossomed anemones and antheas, and come home with an empty jar and an aching heart, all being now swept as clean as the palm of your hand! Yet let me do the fair students and their officious beaux justice; the work is not altogether done by such hands as theirs; but there is a host of professional collectors, small tradesmen whom you must search up in back alleys, and whose houses you will easily recognise by the sea-weedy odour, even before you see the array of pans and dishes in front of the door all crowded with full-blown specimens. These collect for the trade, and are indefatigable. Only think of the effect produced on the marine population by three or four men in a town, one of whom will take ten dozen anemones in a single tide!

The fact is, the fashionable watering-places on our south and west coasts are completely stripped; and any one who really wishes to find anything worth having, must seek some quiet, undisturbed sea-nook, where there are no visitors, where the new trade has not yet been set up, and where the poor people are too primitive to notice such “rubbish" as you value.

Therefore it was that we ran some miles away from home, and pursued a pleasant road, partly through green lanes, rank with the glossy young leaves of the arum, and the arching fronds of the hart's-tongue fern, scarcely embrowned by the late Arctic winter, and partly sweeping along the shoreline and over the cliffs that make the base of this beautiful bay, till, Paignton being some distance behind us, we turned off to the left down a little lane, and drew up at the margin of the broad flat beach called the Goodrington Sands.

Far away is the edge of the sea, for the tide is wonderfully low, though we have yet a full hour

There is our working ground, at the foot of those red cliffs. We diverge a little from a straight line, and approach the edge of the sands, in order to see what those two men are so busy about, as they trudge along the water-line with stooping backs and downward gaze. Oh, they are fishermen taking solens, or razor-fish, as they call them. Each carries a light, narrow, but deep spade in his hand, and, as he marks a little jet of clear water that spirts upward from a small hole in the sand, he rapidly thrusts in his instrument, and adroitly jerks out his prey. It is that mollusc, whose long parallel-sided, convex, bivalve shell, something like the handle of an old-fashioned razor, is so common on every sandy beach, but which is more rarely seen alive. Here we see the poor creature so unceremoniously brought to light, much too big for its valves to contain, its pellucid body shrinking and quivering, its long white foot, like a finger cut off slantwise, and its siphons still contracting, and discharging the limpid water in great rapidly successive drops. The man scarcely deigns it a glance, thinks nought of its curious structure, cares only for the halfpence it will bring him in the fish-market, jerks it into his basket, and watches for the next jet of water with which the frightened and retiring mollusc shall betray its place of retreat.

We quicken our steps to atone for this momentary delay, for time is precious, and the tide has not long to run, and time and tide wait for no man. Now we approach the wilderness of boulders that fringe the cliff-foot, huge masses of the coarse red conglomerate, that the combined action of suecessive winters and summers has dislodged from the promontory, and plunged in confusion at its base. The unwonted recess of the water to-day permits us to wind around the outer edge of these, with a little shallow wading, and an occasional climbing over a block more obtrusive than its fellows. We soon see that we are on promising ground. The perpendicular surfaces of these huge blocks, especially those which are turned from the sun, are crowded with specimens of various species of anemones. Here are numerous colonies of the smooth, great, overgrown strawberries, display. ing their yellow-green spotting on their liver-red bodies; smaller, but more attractive self-coloured ones, plump and pellucid, crimson and green, reminding us of cherries and green-gages; and hosts of little ones, hardly arrived at an age to develop any particular character as yet. And here are great daisies, profusely crowded; purple-bodied,