The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who now constituted the whole Jewish nation, brought back with them to Palestine the ancient spirit of hostility towards the Israelitish kingdom, the people of which they were pleased to class under the general denomination of Samaritans; an impure race, descended from the eastern colonists sent by Shalmaneser to replace the Hebrew captives whom he removed to Halah and Habor and the cities of the Medes. In this way they roused an opposition, and created difficulties which otherwise they might not have experienced during their erection of the second Temple. The countenance of the Persian court itself was occasionally withdrawn from men, who appeared to acknowledge no affinity with any other order of human beings, and who seemed determined to exclude from their country, as well as from their religious rites and privileges, all who could not establish an immaculate descent from the father of the faithful. For this reason, the sympathy which is so naturally excited in the breast of the reader in behalf of the weary exiles, who sat down and wept by the waters of Babylon with their thoughts fixed on Zion, is very apt to be extinguished when he contemplates the bitter enmity with which they rejected the kind offices of their ancient brethren amid the ruins of their metropolis. The names of Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, and Ezra occupy the most distinguished place among those worthies who were selected by Divine Providence to conduct the restoration of the chosen people. After much toil, interruption, and alarm, Jerusalem could once more boast of a temple which, although destitute of the rich ornaments lavished upon that of Solomon; was at least of equal dimensions, and erected on the same consecrated ground. But the worshipper had to deplore the absence of the Ark, the symbolical Urim and Thummim, the Shechinah or Divine Presence, and the celestial fire which had maintained an unceasing flame upon the altar. Their Sacred Writings, too, had been dispersed, and their ancient language was fast becoming obsolete. To prevent the extension of so great an evil, the more valuable manuscripts were collected and arranged, containing the Law, the earlier Prophets, and the inspired Hymns used for the purpose of devotion. Some compositions, however, which respected the remotest period of their commonwealth, especially the Book of Jasher and the Wars of the Lord, were irretrievably lost.