There is no subject on which greater obscurity prevails than that of the learning and schools of the Hebrews prior to their return from the Babylonian Captivity. The wise institution of Moses, which provided for the maintenance of Levitical towns in all the tribes, secured at least an hereditary knowledge of the law, including both its civil and its spiritual enactments. It is extremely probable, therefore, that all the varieties of literary attainment which might he deemed necessary, either for the discharge of professional duties or for the ornament of private life, were derived from those seminaries, and partook largely of their general character and spirit. An examination of the scanty remains of that remote period will justify, to a considerable extent, the conjecture now made. It will appear that the poetry, the ethics, the oratory, the music, and even the physical science cultivated in the time of Samuel and David bore a close relation to the original object of the Levitical colleges, and were meant to promote the principles of religion and morality, no less than of that singular patriotism which made the Hebrew delight in his separation from all other nations of the earth. Our attention is first attracted by the several allusions which are scattered over the earlier books of the Old Testament to the schools of the prophets. These were establishments obviously intended to prepare young men for certain offices analogous to those which are discharged in our days by the different orders of the clergy; maintained in some degree at the public expense; and placed under the superintendence of persons who were distinguished for their gravity and high endowments. The principal studies pursued in these convents appear to have been poetry and music, the elements of which were necessary to the young prophet when he was called to take a part in the worship of Jehovah. In the book of Samuel we find the pupils performing on psalteries, tabrets, and harps; and in the first section of the Chronicles it is said that the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthan prophesied with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals. For the same reason Miriam the sister of Moses is called a prophetess. When preparing to chant her song of triumph, upon the destruction of the Egyptians at the Red Sea, "she took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances."