when some of them, like Elias for instance, had received from God the supreme and immediate power over life and death, as the distinct badge of dominion; we cannot wonder that men should have followed them, the people have been at their bidding, and kings themselves, even though they followed not always their counsels, have hearkened at least to their warning voice. If those who are so fond of playing the part of oppositionists in every country, could only once rise superior to vulgar forms and formulas, and not every where seek for the echo of their modern opinions, an attentive study of the character of Elias would hold up to their admiring view an oppositionist, who in energy of conduct, and in burning zeal for the cause of truth and justice, or in other words, of God, could not be perhaps easily equalled by any historical personage whether of ancient republics, or of modern monarchies. After the Jewish state had become a kingdom of no very great dimensions, it shared the destiny of most of the petty states in those regions; and was first a province of the Assyro-Babylonian empire, then became subject to the Persian monarchs, and afterwards to the Greek kings of Syria and Egypt, till with these it was finally swallowed up in the vast empire of all-conquering Rome. In that restoration of the Jewish state which the Maccabees accomplished in the last period of the Greek domination over Judea, the High-Priest acquired a concurrent political power; a power which he even still retained under the oppressive protectorate of the Romans, though his functions, which were those of a legislator and supreme judge, were confined to the internal government of the state. But this does not constitute a really sacerdotal dominion, and the term theocracy is as little applicable to such an order of things, as to the Greek Patriarchate in the Turkish empire. However, the holy city of Jerusalem, along with Solomon's old, mighty and symbolical temple (whose deep import and proper signification the Jews themselves at a later period no longer understood), still continued to be the main centre of the old national existence and ancient recollections of the Hebrews, as well as of their future hopes and prophetic promises. Even after the fearful destruction of Jerusalem, this emblematic idea of the holy city still lived in the recollection of mankind, and a long time afterwards was, in Christian Europe, an animating incentive to the warlike nations of the Middle Age.