All history has shown us that, as nations have been verging to their ruin, they have yielded themselves to criminal excess and sensual indulgence; and the boasted periods of splendour and high refinement have been but the preludes to long seasons of national calamity or entire overthrow. Thus we may suppose it to have been with the ancient descendants of Israel. The courts were splendid and all the arts were patronized, while the thin veil of refinement was thrown over deeply corrupt manners. The people, departing from a holy faith, were sinking into a sullen debasement, or giving themselves to sensual indulgence and brutal ferocity. Modern nations have followed in the footsteps of the ancient world. The same idols are still worshipped under other names--the same passions rule the unholy heart. [Illustration] ESTHER. [Illustration] When Isaiah wrote, Babylon sat a queen among the nations, in the pride of pomp and power, in the full security of strength; yet he graphically depicted her desolation and foretold her present state, while he pronounced her doom--a perpetual desolation. She shall never be rebuilt! Her towers are fallen and her site marked by ruins. The decline of Babylon had begun. It was certain, although slow. Years were to pass before the sentence should be fully executed. At the period, when the transactions recorded in the book of Esther took place, Shushan was the royal city of Persia. We are told that in this--the City of Lilies--the king Ahasuerus held a great feast, probably in celebration of some recent success, or in commemoration of some great national event. He assembled all the princes and nobles of his vast empire, extending from Egypt to India, and gave a feast or succession of festivities, which continued for more than the third of a year. All that oriental splendour and magnificence could contribute, all the expedients that eastern luxury could desire, to multiply the resources and to heighten the enjoyment of pleasure, were brought to aid the designs of the monarch and to add to the festivities of his court. Yet motives of policy may have combined with the designs of pleasure. In all ages the despot has sought to blind and dazzle the people by a display of power and magnificence; and the princes and nobles around, from distant provinces, have swelled the retinue of their attendants. The amusements of monarchs and of courts have, through all varieties of manners and degrees of refinement, been much the same. The ancient Syrian or Persian, like the modern British or French monarch, had his royal parks and forests for hunting. All nations have patronized the various trials of skill and strength, and the mimic fight has ever been an amusement where war was the great business of life. And the royal pageantry was doubtless intermingled with the religious ceremonies which allowed a license to criminal indulgence and at the same time offered a supposed expiation for crime.