senger and Rebekah reach in safety the encampment of Abraham; and Isaac when he hears the sound of the returning camels beholds a fair maiden modestly veiled, whom he conducts and puts in possession of the tent of his mother Sarah, that which belonged to the chief wife of the head of the tribe.

After the death of Sarah, Abraham took another wife Keturah, by whom he had many children. Isaac, however, continued his sole heir, the rest were sent away into the east country; their descendants are frequently recognized among the people noticed in the Jewish annals, but always as aliens from the stock of Abraham. At length the Patriarch died, and was buried in Machpelah, by Ishmael and Isaac, who met in perfect amity to perform the last duty to the head and father of their tribes.

Such is the history of their great ancestor, preserved in the national records of the Jewish people, remarkable for its simplicity and historic truth, when compared with the mythic or poetic traditions of almost all other countries. The genealogies of most nations, particularly the eastern, are lost among their gods; it is impossible to define where fable ceases, and history begins; and the earlier we ascend the more indistinct and marvellous the narrative. In the Hebrew record it is precisely the converse, God and man separated by a wide and impassable intervalAbraham is the Emir of a pastoral tribe, migrating from place to place, his stations marked with geographical accuracy, and with a picturesque simplicity of local description; here he pitches his tent by some old and celebrated tree, there on the

are

brink of a well-known fountain. He is in no respect superior to his age or country, excepting in the sublime purity of his religion. He is neither demi-god nor mighty conqueror, nor even sage, nor inventor of useful arts. His distinction is the worship of One Great God, and the intercourse which he is permitted to hold with this mysterious Being. This is the great patrimonial glory which he bequeathed to his descendants; their title to be considered the chosen people of the Almighty, was their inalienable hereditary possession. This is the key to their whole history, the basis of their political institutions, the vital principle of their national character.

The life of Isaac was far less eventful, nor is it necessary for the right understanding of the Jewish history, to relate its incidents so much at length as those of the great progenitor of the Jewish people. At first, the divine promise of a numerous posterity proceeds very slowly towards its accomplishment. After some years of barrenness Rebekah bears twins, already before their birth seeming to struggle for superiority, as the heads and representatives of two hostile people. They were as opposite in their disposition as in their way of life. The red-haired Esau was a wild hunter, and acquired the fierce and reckless character which belongs to the ruder state of society to which he reverted; the latter retained the comparative gentleness of the more thoughtful and regular pastoral occupation. It is curious to observe the superior fitness in the habits and disposition of the younger, Jacob, to become the parent of an united and settled people. Though the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, ranked in civilization far

above the marauding Bedouins, who sprung from Ishmael; though Esau himself possessed at a later period considerable wealth in flocks and herds, yet the scattered clans of the Edomites, at perpertual war with each other and with their neighbours, living, according to the expression of the sacred writer, by the sword, retain as it were the stamp of the parental character, and seem less adapted to the severe discipline of the Mosaic institutions, or to become a nation of peaceful husbandmen. The precarious life of the hunter soon laid him at the mercy of his more prudent or rather crafty brother. After a day of unsuccessful hunting, Esau sold his right of primogeniture for a mess of herbs. The privilege of the first-born seems to have consisted in the acknowledged headship of the tribe, to which the office of priest and sacrificer was inseparably attached. Esau, therefore, thus carelessly threw away both his civil and religious inheritance, and abandoned all title to the promises made to his tribe.

Whether the parental blessing was supposed of itself to confer or to confirm the right of primogeniture, is not quite clear; but the terms in which it was conveyed by Isaac, "Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down before thee," seem to intimate a regular investiture with the supreme authority as head of the tribe. This blessing, couched in these emphatic words, which Isaac evidently doubted his power to retract, was intercepted, with the assistance of his mother, by the subtle and unscrupulous Jacob. These repeated injuries roused the spirit of revenge in the indignant hunter; he only waits the

decease of his father that he may recover his rights by the death of his rival. But Rebekah anticipates the crime. Jacob is sent to the original birthplace of the tribe, partly to secure him from the impending danger, partly that, avoiding all connection with the Canaanites, he may intermarry only with the descendants of his forefathers. On his way to Mesopotamia, the promise made to Abraham is renewed in that singular vision-so expressively symbolical of the universal providence of God-the flight of steps uniting earth and heaven, with the ministering angels perpetually ascending and descending. In commemoration of this vision, Jacob set up a sort of primitive monument-a pillar of stone. The adventures of Jacob among his nomadic ancestors present a most curious and characteristic view of their simple manners and usages. His meeting with Rachel at the well; the hospitality of Laban to his sister's son; his agreement to serve seven years* to obtain Rachel in marriage; the public ceremony of espousals in the presence of the tribe; the stratagem of Laban to substitute his elder for his younger and fairer daughter, in order to bind the enamoured

* "I once met with a young man who had served eight years for his food only; at the end of that period he obtained in marriage the daughter of his master, for whom he would otherwise have had to pay seven or eight hundred piastres. When I saw him he had been married three years; but he bitterly complained of his father-in-law, who continued to require of him the performance of the most servile offices, without paying him any thing; and that prevented him from setting up for himself and family."-Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, p. 297. This was in the Haouran, the district south-east of Damascus.

stranger to seven years' longer service; the little jealousies of the sisters, not on account of the greater share in their husband's affections, but their own fertility; the substitution of their respective handmaids; the contest in cunning and subtlety between Laban and Jacob, the former endeavouring to defraud the other of his due wages, and at the same time to retain so useful a servant, under whom his flocks had so long prospered the latter, by his superior acquaintance with the habits of the animals which he tended, securing all the stronger and more flourishing part of the flocks for his own portion; the flight of Jacob, not as so rich a resident ought to have been dismissed with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp; Laban's religious awe of one so manifestly under the Divine protection; Rachel's purloining and concealment of her father's Teraphim; above all, their singular treaty, in which Laban at length consents to the final separation of this great family, with which he had expected to increase the power and opulence of his tribe;-all these incidents throw us back into a state of society different not merely from modern usages, but from those which prevailed among the Jews after their return from Egypt. The truth and reality of the picture is not more apparent than its appropriate locality in the regions which it describes :-it is neither Egyptian nor Palestinian, nor even Arabian, life; it breathes the free air of the wide and open plains of inland Asia, where the primitive inhabitants are spreading, without opposition or impediment, with their flocks and herds and camels, over unbounded and unoccupied regions.