came from the land of the Nile. Even in the days of harsher servitude at which we have now arrived, there were no such hideous cruelties as we meet with in the blood-stained pages of Roman, Carthaginian, or American slavery. The Egyptian slave was well fed, and by the moral and religious code maltreatment of a slave was an offence. We do not know the legal code on this subject, but the moral tone is clearly shown in the confession every ruler had to make before Osiris: ‘I have allowed no master to maltreat his slave.’ But moral feeling can grow blunt, and maltreatment was not wanting in the days of Rameses II. The Hebrew colony in Goshen, so warmly welcomed by the Hyksos kings, must have been regarded with distrust on the accession of the native dynasty, which ‘knew not Joseph,’ and had the utmost aversion for aught that was connected with the rulers he had served. Under Rameses, or one of his predecessors, the Hebrews had been reduced to cruel bondage; ‘they built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses.’[69] Their future deliverer, rescued from death by a princess of the royal house,[70] must have spent many years at Zoan, the favourite residence of Rameses, which was close to the district of Goshen, and there he would have the opportunity at any moment of ‘going out to his brethren and looking upon their burdens.’ Moses did not return from his exile during the lifetime of Rameses, but ‘in _process of time_’ that sovereign died.[71] On the accession of Menephtah the hardships of the people were intensified, but their deliverance was close at hand. There is no need to relate the familiar story of their marvellous escape, and of the pursuit, in which so many of the chosen chariots and horses of Menephtah perished.