Eleazar and his kinsmen were instantly upon the road to the mountains, and all was haste and that mixture of anxiety and animation which makes all other life tasteless and colorless to the warrior. With what new vividness did the coming conflict invest the varied and romantic country through which we had already journeyed so often! The hill, the ravine, the superb sweep of forest that we once looked on with but the vague indulgence of the picturesque eye, now filled us with the vision of camps and battles. Hunters of the lion, we had felt something of this interest in tracing the ground where we were to combat the kingly savage. But what were the triumphs of the chase to the mighty chances of that struggle in which a kingdom was to be the field and the Roman glory the prey! [Sidenote: Salathiel Reflects] Man is belligerent by nature, and the thought of war summons up sensations and even faculties within him that in the common course of life would have been no more discoverable than the bottom of the sea; the moral earthquake must come to open the heart for all men to gaze upon. Even Eleazar’s calm and grave wisdom felt the spirit of the time, and he reasoned on the probabilities of the struggle with the lofty ardor of a king preparing to win a new throne. Jubal’s sanguine temper was unrestrainable; he was the war-horse in the sight of the banners; his bronzed cheek glowed with hope and exultation. He saw in every cloud of dust a Roman squadron, and grasped his lance and wheeled his foaming charger with the eager joy of a soldier longing to assuage his thirst for battle. The weight on my melancholy mind was beyond the power of chance or time to remove, but a new strength was in the crisis. The world to me was covered with clouds eternal, but it was now brightened by a wild and keen luster; I saw my way by the lightning. An irresistible conviction still told me that the last day of Israel was approaching, and that no sacrifice of valor or victory could avert the ruin. In the midst of the loudest exhilaration of the fearless hearts around me, the picture of the coming ruin would grow upon my eyes.[15] I saw my generous friends perish one by one; my household desolate; every name that I ever loved passed away. When I bent my eyes round the horizon luxuriating in the golden sunshine of the east, I saw but a huge altar, covered with the fatal offerings of a slaughtered people. [Sidenote: The Memory of Past Years]