strangers, had declined to do so, on the plea that the man was master within his own house. But the Assyrian case was worse. This torture was there applied, not upon a sudden vindictive impulse, but in cold blood, to a simple case apparently of civil disobedience or revolt. Now, when we consider how intimate, and how ancient, was the connection between Assyria and Palestine, how many things (in war especially) were transferred mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitually cruel), from the people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I feel convinced that Moses must have interfered most peremptorily and determinately, and not merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing counter usages against this spirit of barbarity, otherwise it would have increased contagiously, whereas we meet with no such hellish atrocities amongst the children of Israel. In the case of one memorable outrage by a Hebrew tribe, the national vengeance which overtook it was complete and tearful beyond all that history has recorded] has been authorized by the express voice of God. Such a reserve cannot be dispensed with. It belongs to the principle of progress in man that he should forever keep open a secret commerce in the last resort with the spirit of martyrdom on behalf of man's most saintly interests. In proportion as the instruments for upholding or retrieving such saintly interests should come to be dishonored or less honored, would the inference be valid that those interests were shaking in their foundations. And any confederation or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a downward path for man. A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also the meanest, of human exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike truth, for human dignity, or for human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is the principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value a battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which our adult neighbors the French seem to value a battle.