It may not appear out of place to inform the young reader that the prophets whose writings are contained in the Old Testament are in number sixteen, and usually divided into two classes, the greater and the minor, according to the extent of their works and the importance of their subject. Of the former, Isaiah, who may be regarded as the chief, began to prophesy under Uzziah, and continued till the first year of Manasseh. Jeremiah flourished a few years before the great captivity, and lived to witness the fulfilment of his own predictions. Ezekiel, who had been carried into the Babylonian territory some time before the ruin of his native country in the days of Zedekiah, began to perform his office among the Jewish captives in the land of the Chaldees, in the fifth year after Jehoiakim was made prisoner. Daniel, the youngest of the four, was only twelve years of age when he was involved in the miseries of conquest, and reduced to the condition of a dependent at a foreign court. Among the twelve minor prophets, Jonas, Hosea, Amos, and Micah preceded the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. Nahum and Joel appeared between that catastrophe and the captivity of Judah. Habakkuk, Obadiah, and Zephaniah lived at the time when Jerusalem was taken, and during part of the captivity. Haggai, Zecharias, and Malachi, the last of the whole, prophesied after the return from Babylon. But our business is rather with the literature of the prophets at large than with the special functions of the few individuals of their body who were commissioned by Heaven to reveal the secrets of future time. Of the fruits of their professional study we have fine examples preserved in the Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon; the former, a collection of sacred lyrics composed for the worship of Jehovah; the latter, a compend of practical wisdom, suggested by an enlightened experience, and expressed in language equally striking for its divine truth and rare simplicity. In early times the dictates of moral philosophy are enounced in short sentences, the result of much thought, and of which the effect is usually heightened by the introduction of a judicious antithesis both in the sentiment and the expression. The apothegms ascribed to the wise men of Greece belong to this kind of composition; being extremely valuable to a rude people who can profit by the fruits of reasoning without being able to attend to its forms, and deposite in their minds a useful precept, unencumbered with the arguments by means of which its soundness might be proved. The books which bear the name of Solomon are distinguished above all others for the sage views that they exhibit of human life, and for the sensible maxims addressed to all conditions of men who have to encounter its manifold perils--proving a guide unto the feet and a lamp unto the path.