How shall a person subject to the feelings of humanity, (a security of more avail among men than the most binding laws) how shall a man, not steeled to a very Jew, find expressions suited to the occasion, when he relates the treatment of this poor city, Rabbah? The study would be as difficult as unnecessary; the simple unexaggerated tale, if seriously attended to, will shock the humane reader sufficiently. The city was taken and plundered; and David "brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln, and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon."** * It is supposed that the ancient slavery of the Jews to the Egyptians, and the labour they were employed in by their lordly taskmasters, the making bricks, might be a current reproachful jeer upon the Jews, when any quarrel happened between them find their neighbours; and that the making their prisoners pass through the brick-kiln, was a cruel method of revenging such affronts. A conjecture not improbable. ** 2 Sam. xii. 31., 1 Chron. xx. 3. The precise punishments here alluded to are not understood at this time: writers being much divided in their expositions of these words; but that extraordinary punishments are meant, cannot admit of a doubt; for though _believers_ expound the putting the Ammonites _under_ saws and harrows, into the making slaves of them, and that these were the tools with which they laboured; yet this will not agree with the latter of the texts whose authority is mentioned in the note; where it is said, that he [David] "cut them with saws and with harrows of iron, and with axes." And should more evidence be yet required, Josephus also writes, that "the men were put to death by exquisite torments." The general truth of the fact stands therefore unimpeached. And is it thus the people of God, headed by a man styled, in a peculiar manner, _the man after God's own heart_, used the prisoners of war? _Bella! horrida bella!_ It would not be easy to select any period of any history more bloody, or abounding more in wickedness of various dyes than that which is the object of the reader's present attention. Instances succeed so quick that the relation of one is scarcely concluded, but fresh ones obtrude upon notice.--But now horrors of a different hue demand our attention.