So we see Louis XIV., _le grand monarque_, peevish, _ennuyé_, fortunate no longer, an old man of seventy-seven left in his vast lonely palace with his great-grandson, a frivolous child of five, and saying to him, "_J'ai trop aime la guerre; ne m'imitez point_." So we see the last great conqueror of modern times, embittering his dishonoured island-exile by miserable disputes with Sir Hudson Lowe about etiquette and champagne. But among all the "sad stories of the deaths of kings" none ends a purer glory with a more pitiful decline than the poet-king of Israel, whose songs have been to so many thousands their delight in the house of their pilgrimage. Truly David's experience no less than his own may have added bitterness to the traditional epitaph of his son on all human glory: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." FOOTNOTES: [56] 1 Chron. xxiii. 1. [57] 2 Sam. v. 5. [58] It is mentioned by Galen, vii.; Valesius, _De Sacr. Philos._, xxix., p. 187; Bacon, _Hist. Vitæ et Mortis_, ix. 25; Reinhard, _Bibel-Krankheiten_, p. 171. See Josephus, _Antt._, VII. xv. 3. [59] Now Solam, near _Zerin_ (Jezreel), five miles south of Tabor (Robinson, _Researches_, iii. 462), on the south-west of Jebel el-Duhy (Little Hermon), Josh. xix. 18; 1 Sam. xxviii. 4. [60] Æsch., _Sept. c. Theb._, 690. [61] See Psalm cxxii. 3-5. [62] See Kittel, ii. 147. CHAPTER VIII. _AN EASTERN COURT AND HOME._ 1 KINGS i. "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness."--EZEK. xvi. 49. A man does not choose his own destiny; it is ordained for higher ends than his own personal happiness. If David could have made his choice, he might, indeed, have been dazzled by the glittering lure of royalty; yet he would have been in all probability happier and nobler had he never risen above the simple life of his forefathers. Our saintly king in Shakespeare's tragedy says:-- "My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen. My crown is called Content; And crown it is which seldom kings enjoy." David assuredly did not enjoy that crown. After his establishment at Jerusalem it is doubtful whether he could count more happy days than Abderrahman the Magnificent, who recorded that amid a life honoured in peace and victorious in war he could not number more than fourteen.