and despair; and even in slumber murmured, complained, or acted again the strife they had maintained so vainly against the Roman arms. One alone of all these thousands smiled, and he was the noblest and fairest of them all. From his parted lips a holy strain of melody broke forth, then died away in imperfect murmurs; but the listening tyrant recognised in the sleeper the slave whose scornful look had awakened his angry passions on the day when he opened the trench. Adonijah’s dreams are of his own land. He is going up to Jerusalem, to keep the feast of the Passover. His slaughtered brethren are with him, and Tamar, that fair and virgin sister, that Nazarite dedicated from childhood to the Lord, is dancing before them with the timbrel in her hand, singing, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” Suddenly, with the capriciousness of fancy, the scene changes. Again he hears the war-cry of his own people, again hangs upon the flying legions of Cestius Gailus, captures the idol standard, and calls upon the name of the Messiah, the promised deliverer of Israel. He comes, the mighty, the long-expected. The Romans are driven forth from the sacred soil, the valley of Hamoth Gog is full of slaughter, and Adonijah hails the king of Judah, the anointed one of the Lord, with holy joy. But swifter than lightning vanishes the glorious vision from his sight, he awakes, and finds himself a slave in a foreign land. He looked around him doubtfully. The land before him is like the garden of Eden, and the breezes that fan his glowing cheek are fresh and balmy as those that wander over his beloved Judea. The mountains, whose summits are gilded in the radiant moonlight, remind him of those that encompass the holy city. His perception is still visionary and indistinct, the blue waves on either side the Isthmus, the scene of his labours, his raven locks wet with the dews of night, appeal to his scattered senses. The chains upon his free-born limbs sullenly clank as he rises from the earth, memory resumes her powers, he remembers that he is a slave. Despair seizes upon his heart, his thoughts revert to his beloved sister. He no longer sees her bounding along the rocky heights in all the beauty of holiness and youthful enthusiasm, her form graceful as the palm-tree, from which she derives her name, but mentally views her sinking beneath the cruel sword of the Gentile. Her cry is in his ears, and again he utters the bitter cry, “O Tamar! O my sister! would to God that I had died with thee, my sister! Why was I not buried beneath the ruins of Jotapata? Why am I cast forth like an abominable branch to wither in this strange land?” The wretched Hebrew sank upon the ground, wrapped his face in his garment, and sobbed aloud in the bitterness of his heart.