thee, because thou art a salt and crafty river.’ So he ordered them to punish the sea thus, and to cut off the heads of the Grecians who had charge of the bridge.”[132] This is as downright frenzy as the walls of Bedlam ever witnessed: a paroxysm of temporary insanity, produced by disappointment acting on a vain, ungoverned mind. Before proceeding to relate in detail the lives of some remarkable persons which bear upon the point in question, we wish briefly to allude to the very singular and striking history of Nebuchadnezzar, though with no view of resolving that preternatural visitation, which is expressly stated to have been from God, into a natural consequence of his intemperate pride. From the few notices of him preserved in the Bible, he seems to have been a man cast in no ordinary mould; to have been endowed with powers and capability of excellence commensurate with the exalted situation which he was appointed to hold. It is evident, however, that he had drunk deep of the intoxication of despotism. His intended massacre of the wise men, and the Chaldeans, in point of wisdom and justice is on a par with the anger of a child who beats his nurse because she will not give him the moon to play with; and his conduct with respect to the image of the plain of Dura, if less preposterous, is not more creditable to his notions of toleration or humanity. In fact, he appears to have been in a fair way to become as truculent a tyrant as Cambyses or Caligula, when that awful vision, related at length in the fourth chapter of Daniel, was presented to him, which foretold his banishment from the throne and from men: and we may infer from the warning of the inspired interpreter, and from the course of the narrative, that his overweening pride and hardness of heart, the food and origin of that mental alienation of which we have been speaking at such length, were the vices against which Divine anger was especially directed. “This is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my lord the king: They shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.... Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor: if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.... At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spoke and said, Is not this the great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; the kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass