A prophet was commissioned to tell the wise, yet foolish monarch that the kingdom should be rent in twain, and the grandeur of his empire depart before the revolt of the ten tribes from Judah, which had absorbed the small tribe of Benjamin. Solomon was about sixty years old when he died. He had ruled forty years, and was buried nine hundred and seventy-five years before the advent of Christ. Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was made king over Judah, and Jereboam, an Ephraimite, became sovereign of the ten tribes, who were called Israel. How interesting and instructive the history of the Hebrews, at this period! They got tired of the sovereignty of God, visible only in written rules of conduct, family government, and the prophet-judges, and desired to imitate their pagan neighbors in the pomp and power of royalty. Under their second monarch they quarrelled among themselves, engaged in civil strife, and became divided, rival kingdoms. During the five hundred years which followed, the successive kings of the two realms had, the most of them, brief sovereignty. Some of them were excellent kings, but the greater part were wicked and oppressive. Pre-eminent in crime was Ahab, whose wife, Jezebel, was a fit companion. Their names live in the world's history with a bad preeminence, like those of Herod, Nero, and similar rulers of ancient and modern times. The corpse of a ruler, or of the humblest subject, was ordinarily wound in grave-clothes, and laid in a sepulchre. This, in the early ages, was a room hewn out of a rock, a cave, or a grave which had no mound, nor any other mark, excepting monumental stones, with no inscriptions. The Arabian patriarch, Job, talked of kings and counsellors, who built for themselves "desolate places," which probably has reference to sepulchral monuments, cut out of the rock. The expression "a sepulchre on high," is an allusion to the custom anciently of placing the dead in tombs made in cliffs, sometimes hundreds of feet in height--a lofty, inaccessible resting-place for the body of a distinguished person. Some nations of the heathen world have always burned their dead. In Japan, recently, an American traveller witnessed this singular disposal of the lifeless remains. A priest was placed in a sitting posture in his coffin, and a fire built behind it, consuming to ashes the body. These relics were carefully gathered up, and put in a safe and sacred place for all coming time. It is a remarkable thing that the Bible does not record any solemn parade or imposing ceremonies over the burial of the Hebrew kings.