As the latter day Jew looked back upon this period, across an interval of centuries, it seemed to him that the kingdom of Israel, in this its time of relative might, had shone as a star of the first magnitude in the oriental firmament. But in truth it was only the eye of national prejudice that could thus magnify the mild effulgence of Hebrew glory. In reality, the kingdom of Israel, even under David, was but a petty state; and such power as it seemed to wield was due largely to the momentary weakness of surrounding nations. It chanced that the epoch of Hebrew monarchy was contemporary with the XXIst Dynasty of Egypt, during which time that land was governed simultaneously by the Tanites and high priests, whose dissensions so weakened the government that the chief authority gradually passed into the hands of the commanders of Libyan mercenaries. Torn thus by internal dissensions, Egypt had little time to think of external conquests. Meantime a condition of things not altogether dissimilar existed in Mesopotamia. Babylonia and Assyria were struggling one against the other, and mutual antagonism weakened each principality. It was this temporary lull in the warlike activities of the really great oriental nations that enabled the Israelites to achieve a momentary position of relative consequence, which traditionalists of a later day were able, with some slight show of verisimilitude, to magnify into a period of actual glory. “Man to console himself for a destiny most frequently leaden,” says Ernest Renan,[1] speaking of the last great Hebrew monarchs, “is constrained to imagine brilliant ages in the past, a kind of fireworks which did not last, but produced a charming effect. In spite of the anathemas of prophets and the disparagements of the northern tribes, Solomon left, amongst a section of the people, an admiration that expressed itself, after a lapse of two or three hundred years, in the half-legendary history which figures in the Books of the Kings. The misfortunes of the nation only served to excite these visions of a lost ideal. Solomon became the pivot of the Jewish _agada_, [the legendary element of the Talmud]. To the author of Ecclesiastes he is already the richest and most powerful of men. In the Gospels he is the embodiment of all human splendour. A luxuriant garden of myths grew up around him. Mohammed fed on it; then on the wings of Islamism this shower of fables, variegated with a thousand hues, spread through the whole world the magic name of Soleyman. The historic fact concealed behind these marvellous stories was roughly this: A thousand years before Christ there reigned in a petty acropolis in Syria, a petty sovereign, intelligent, and unencumbered by national prejudices, understanding nothing of the true vocation of his race, and wise according to the ideas of that time, though it cannot be said that he was superior in morality to the average Eastern monarchs of all ages.