the imperial mandate, on pretence of allowing time for the statue to be finished; but it was to a native prince, yet more than to Petronius, that the Israelites owed their security.

On the early and romantic history of Herod Agrippa, the son of Aristobulus and grandson of Mariamne, we cannot here be permitted to linger. He had been taken to Rome by his mother Berenice directly after his father's murder; and there, enjoying the favour and friendship of many noble Romans, had passed his youth. His varied fortunes might fill a volume. We can here only make such mention of him as is connected with this general sketch. Caligula had made him King of Gaulanitis, Batanea, and Trachonitis, and Tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa. Greater part of what had formerly been the Holy Land in consequence belonged to him; but Judea was still possessed by Rome.

Though educated in the Roman capital, and continually residing there, even after he was termed King of the Jews, Agrippa appears to have retained that strong feeling of nationality, and earnest love for his country and religion, so peculiar to the valiant founders of the Asmonæan race. On hearing of the disastrous alternative proposed to his countrymen in Judea-the desecration of their Temple or their entire destruction, he invited Caligula to a banquet, and treated him with such extraordinary splendour as to excite the astonishment of even that luxurious Sovereign, who, in the moment of enjoyment, desired him to ask a boon, which he swore to grant. The true Asmonæan blood flowed in the veins of the grandson of Mariamne. It was easy to have asked increase of dominion-of revenue-and thus have

aggrandised himself; but not such was his request! He entreated the repeal of the fatal edict; and, after a struggle between wounded pride and his attachment to the petitioner, Caligula consented, and the decree was suspended.

The murder of Caligula followed. Agrippa alone paid him the last honours. He could forget the vices of the man in the attachment of the friend. The peaceful acknowledgment of Claudius as emperor was mainly attributable to this Jewish prince, and Claudius did not forget the obligation. The investiture of all the domains of the great Herod was conferred on Agrippa; Judea and Samaria were once again united with Galilee, Peræa and the provinces beyond Jordan-forming one independent kingdom, which a public edict proclaimed as a donation from the Emperor to Agrippa; between whom a treaty was formally concluded.

Once more, then, for the brief interval of three years, did the Hebrews breathe in religious and moral freedom. Once more the reins of government were held by a native prince, whose Asmonæan descent rendered him universally popular, save to some stern zealots, whose factious spirits were ever on the watch for turbulence and blood. Once more we seem to associate with a people following the Law of God, ruled by a prince whose most ardent desire appeared to follow the statutes of Moses with the utmost exactness! Daily sacrifices were offered, legal impurities strictly prohibited, taxes remitted, the religion and comfort of his people made his first object; while the munificence and splendour of his court, the sumptuous buildings he erected, surrounded him with all the pomp and power of an inde

pendent Sovereign. His brief reign, marked as it is with such meek and gentle authority in the Sovereign, such calm and peaceful nationality in the People, shines forth like a bright star amidst the troublous wars and stormy clouds of awful darkness which it followed and preceded. Its beams had power to disperse, for a brief interval, the dim shadows of the PAST; but the black wings of the FUTURE gathered round and shrouded up its mild light in such awful darkness that we almost forget it ever shone.

The death of Agrippa, while it occasioned the deepest grief amongst the Hebrews, excited the most brutal exultation amongst the Greek inhabitants of Cæsarea and Sebaste. The cause of this enmity appears an impenetrable mystery, Agrippa having treated them with unvarying kindness. Their insolent conduct occasioned Claudius to command the cohorts in their city to remove into Pontus, and their places to be filled with draughts from the legions in Syria. We are particular in mentioning this, because Josephus believes it to be the primary cause of the Jewish War. The mandate of the Emperor was not executed; but the disgrace was equally the same; and, rankling in the hearts of the troops, exasperated them yet more against the Hebrews, and incited those horrible acts of oppression and cruelty which at length goaded Judea into a general revolt.

The son of Agrippa (who bore the same name) being considered too young to succeed him as sovereign, Judea relapsed into a Roman province. Agrippa remained at the court of Claudius, imbibing Roman feelings and Roman principles, so completely to the exclusion of nationality, as caused him, in the war which followed,

basely to adhere to the Roman party, and to make no effort to ameliorate the condition of his countrymen. He appears to have lived occasionally at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, and at Rome, enjoying at the former city the title of King, and the power of appointing High-Priests ; but otherwise his was a very empty dignity—the real government of the country resting in the hands of the Procurators. Rome, however, was his usual residence ; its luxurious enjoyment being more according to his vitiated taste than the bold stand for independence which his unhappy countrymen were making. The term of his death is uncertain; but he died, as he had lived, forgetting the calamities and ruin of his country in the morally degraded, but physically secure condition of a Roman vassal. He was the last, either of the Asmonæan or Idumean race, who bore the title of King.

Meanwhile, Zadus, Tiberius (an apostate Egyptian Jew, and consequently yet more odious to the people than the Romans themselves), Cumanus, Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Florus, had been successive Procurators of Judea; occupying a period of rather more than twenty years a term brief in itself, but fraught with increasing misery to the inhabitants of Palestine. Each Procurator appeared more oppressive, more exacting than the last Insults from the Roman soldiery, constantly accompanying those religious forms and ceremonies, which, in consequence, had become yet dearer, were answered by fiery spirits ripe for vengeance; and this, of course, was followed by indiscriminate slaughter of the Jews. Massacres of hundreds, even of thousands, took place under every Procurator, not only in Judea, but in Syria; and we are told that, after the defeat of the

Romans under Cestus by the excited Hebrews, the citizens of Damascus massacred ten thousand of their Hebrew brethren, notwithstanding their own wives were all attached to Judaism.

massacres.

Pillage and insult, of course, accompanied these fearful All legal authority was at an end. Though the high priesthood was retained, the temple worship continued, the outward ordinances of the feasts and fasts observed, yet the beautiful laws, guiding not only communities but households, were swallowed up in the vortex of oppression, insult, and misery, which, under the administration of Florus, reached its crisis. The evil passions of man were alone visible. Robbers and assassins, the last blaspheming the mild law of Moses, by pretending its authority for their deeds of blood-were amongst the Jews themselves-and devastated both province and city. Divided within themselves-so goaded by oppression, that the dictates of humanity were unheard -party spirit utterly preventing that national union, which alone could hope for success-without a leaderwithout a plan for the most part regardless of the laws of either God or man; such was the condition of the country on the eve of its general revolt. Darkness, morally and mentally, had gathered round; and it was no marvel. The return from Babylon had been granted as a trial of their return to their God aud the pure worship of their ancestors. He inspired a heathen sovereign to grant them liberty and independence. It was in their power then to have come back, heart and soul, to the pure and faithful observance of His law, to the making the Land of Promise once more a Holy Landresting on the blessing, the guidance, the sovereignty of