As our cosmopolitan prince had to send abroad for workmen of skill, he may also have had to seek abroad for ladies accomplished enough to be his princesses. That, however, does not explain the number and variety of the countries from which the wives seem to have come. The theory of many scholars that this Prince of Peace substituted alliances by marriage for military conquests is confirmed in at least one instance. The mother of his only son, Rehoboam, was Naamah the Ammonitess (1 Kings xiv. 31), and the Septuagint preserves an addition to this verse that she was the "daughter of Ana, the son of Nahash,"--a king (Hanum) with whom David had waged furious war. The reference in the epithalamium (Psalms xlv.) to "Tyrus's daughter," in connexion with 1 Kings v. 12, "there was peace between Hiram and Solomon," suggests that there also marriage was the peacemaker. The phrase in 1 Kings iii. 1, "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh and took Pharaoh's daughter" suggests, though less clearly, that some feud may have been settled in that case also. That Solomon should have espoused as his first and pre-eminent queen the daughter of a Pharaoh is very picturesque if set beside the legend of the "Land of Bondage," but the narrative could hardly have been given without any allusion to bygones had the story in Exodus been known. Yet the words "made affinity" may refer to a racial feud in that direction. This princess brought as her dowry the important frontier city of Gezer, and her palace appears to have been the first fine edifice erected in Jerusalem. The commercial régime established by Solomon could hardly have been possible but for his intermarriages. Perhaps if the Christian ban had not been fixed against polygamy, and European princes had been permitted to marry in several countries, there might have been fewer wars, as well as fewer illicit connexions. The intermarriages of the large English royal family with most of the reigning houses of Europe, have been for many years a security of peace, and it is not improbable that our industrial and democratic age, wherein the working man's welfare depends on peace, may find in the undemocratic institution of royalty a certain utility in its power to be prolific in such ties of peace. CHAPTER IV. SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY. Bathsheba's function at Solomon's marriage is celebrated in the Song of Songs: "Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon, With the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals."