Although there is every reason to believe that Solomon died a penitent man, yet his sins and the consequent wretchedness of soul, and the ruin of his kingdom, teach most emphatically the weakness of human nature, even when accompanied by the greatest genius, the perils of material prosperity, and the real insufficiency of all possible earthly good to satisfy the wants of the soul of man. [Signature of the author.] LYCURGUS[5] By REV. JOSEPH T. DURYEA (About 884-820 B.C.) [Footnote 5: Copyright. 1894. by Selmar Hess.] Scholars generally agree in the judgment that Lycurgus was a real person. It is probable that he was born in the ninth century B.C., and that, in the later part of the same century (850-820), he was an important, if not the principal, agent in the reconstruction of the Dorian state of Sparta, in the Peloponnesus. According to Herodotus, he was the uncle of King Labotas, of the royal line of Eurysthenes. Others, whom Plutarch follows, describe him as the uncle and guardian of King Charilaus, and therefore in the line of Procles. Either way his mythical lineage would be traced to Hercules. We are able to find no trustworthy records of the circumstances of his birth, and of the incidents of his childhood and youth. Plutarch, with all his diligence, found nothing. Nor could he sift and blend the varying stories of his later life and so construct a consistent and credible narrative, O. Mueller says: "We have absolutely no account of him as an individual person." [Illustration: Lycurgus. [TN]] Accordingly Lycurgus appears already in his maturity. We know what he was only from what he did. He has this imperishable honor, that he did something, and did it in such a manner and with such effect that the memory of him and his deeds has lasted until this late time, and bids fair to last throughout all time.