and some of his household. Two hundred thousand men, women, and children, were led away into captivity. The sight of their brethren in this miserable condition aroused the better feelings of the Israelites: they refused to retain them in servitude; forced the army into milder measures; treated the prisoners with great kindness; gave them food, raiment and the means of returning home—a beautiful and refreshing incident in this gloomy and savage part of their annals; and, as usual, to be ascribed to one of their prophets. Rezin, in the mean time, the ally of Pekah, seized Elath. The Edomites and Philistines revolted; and Ahaz, attacked on all sides, in his desperation threw himself under the protection of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian king, who had already subdued all the Transjordanic tribes, and advanced his frontier to the banks of the river. This treaty led to the usual results, where a weaker state enters into an alliance with a stronger. The Assyrian lent his aid as far as suited his own views of conquest; invaded Syria, took Damascus, led the people away captive, and slew the king. But against the more immediate enemies of Ahaz, the Edomites, he sent no succours, and exhausted the kingdom of Judah by the exaction of a heavy tribute. It was not from want of base subservience to his protector, that Ahaz suffered this ungenerous treatment. Ahaz revolted entirely from the national faith; he offered public worship to the gods of Syria; constructed a new altar on the model of the one he saw at Damascus, where he went to pay homage to the Assyrian; and robbed the treasury to pay his tribute. He defaced many of the vessels and buildings of the temple.

No superstition was too cruel for Ahaz; he offered incense in the valley of Hinnom, and made his children pass through the fire. In short, had not his death relieved his people, Jerusalem seemed rapidly following the example, and hastening towards the fate of Samaria. For now the end of that kingdom drew on. The unprincipled, though able Pekah, was assassinated; another period of anarchy lasted for several years, till at length the sceptre fell into the feeble hands of Hoshea, who had instigated the murder of Pekah. A new and still more ambitious monarch, Shalmaneser now wielded the power of Assyria; Hoshea attempted to avert the final subjugation of his kingdom by the payment of tribute, but being detected in a secret correspondence with the king of Egypt, called So, the Sevechus of Manetho, the Assyrian advanced into the kingdom, besieged Samaria, which, after an obstinate resistance of three years, surrendered, and thus terminated for ever the independent kingdom of Israel or Ephraim.

It was the policy of the Assyrian monarchs to transplant the inhabitants of the conquered provinces on their borders, to the inland districts of their empire. Thus they occupied their outposts with those on whose fidelity they might rely; and, with far wiser and more generous views, by introducing agricultural colonies among the ruder and nomadic hordes, as the Russians have done in their vast dominions, carried culture and civilization into wild and savage districts. Pul and Tiglath Pileser had already swept away a great part of the population from Syria, and the Transjordanic tribes: and Shalmaneser, after the capture of Samaria, carried

off vast numbers of the remaining tribes to a mountainous region between ́Assyria and Media, who were afterwards replaced there by colonies of a race called Cuthæans. From this period, history loses sight of the ten tribes as a distinct people. Prideaux supposes that they were totally lost and absorbed in the nations among whom they settled; but imagination has loved to follow them into remote and inaccessible regions, where it is sup> posed that they still await the final restoration of the twelve tribes to their native land; or it has traced the Jewish features, language, and religion, in different tribes, particularly the Afghans of India, and in a still wilder spirit of romance, in the Americans. How far the descendants of the Israelites constituted the mingled people of the Samaritans, whose history has come down to us only as it is coloured by irreconcilable Jewish hostility, is a question hereafter to be discussed.

While the kingdom of Israel was rarely blessed by a permanent, vigorous and prudent administration, and frequently endured all the evils of a contested and irregular succession, which placed adventurer after adventurer, or short and precarious dynasties upon the throne: while the best of their kings only so far returned to the national faith, as to extirpate foreign idolatry, but remained true to the separate, symbolic, and forbidden worship of Jeroboam-the hereditary succession of Judah remained unbroken in the line of David, and a period of misrule and irreligion was almost invariably succeeded by a return to the national faith. Accordingly, six years before the final destruction of Samaria, one of the best and wisest of her kings, He

zekiah, replaced his father Ahaz on the throne of Judah, (B. C. 726). Hezekiah carried the reformation much further than his most religious predecessors. The temple was cleansed-the rites restored with more than usual solemnity-the priesthood and Levites reinstated in their privileges every vestige of idolatrous superstition eradicated-the shrines of false gods demolished-the groves levelled-the high places desecrated; even the brazen serpent made by Moses in the wilderness, having been abused to superstitious purposes, was destroyed. Having thus prepared the way, Hezekiah began still further to develop his plans, which tended to the consolidation of the whole Hebrew race under their old religious constitution. He determined to celebrate the passover (that which was called the second passover) with all its original splendour and concourse of people. He sent messengers into the neighbouring kingdom of Israel, to summon the ten tribes, then under the feeble rule of Hoshea. The proud Ephraimites treated his message with contempt; but from the smaller tribes multitudes flocked to Jerusalem, where the sacrifices were offered with something like the ancient state and magnificence. On their return, the religious zeal of those who had visited Jerusalem, had great effect on their kindred; idolatry was put down by force, the temples and altars destroyed. How far, if the Jewish constitution had existed in its original vigour, and the whole of Palestine remained one great consolidated kingdom, it could have offered an effectual resistance to the vast monarchies which now began to spread the shadow of their despotism over the East-how far the kingdom of David and Solo

mon might have held the balance between the rival empires of Egypt and Assyria, in whose collision it was finally crushed-must be matter of speculation. But from this fatal period, Palestine was too often the debateable ground, on which rival kingdoms or empires fought out their quarrels. On this arena, not only the monarchs of Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient Egyptian sovereigns, but subsequently also the Ptolemaic and Syro-Grecian dynasties, the Romans and Parthians-we may add the Christian and Mahometan powers during the crusades-strove either for ascendancy over the eastern world or for universal dominion. The wise policy of Hezekiah, if his views led to the union of the kingdoms, came too late. He himself threw off the yoke of Assyria, and gained important ad-. vantages over the Philistines. But divine Providence had ordained the fall of Israel, and after the capture of Samaria, Jerusalem might tremble at the approach of the victor. Shalmaneser, however, was allured by the more tempting conquest of opulent Tyre. The princely merchants of that city resisted vigorously a siege of five years; though their aqueducts were broken, and the population reduced to great distress. The besieged were at length relieved by the death of the invader. The hereditary power and ambition of his conquering ancestors descended into the vigorous hand of Sennacherib. An immense army made its appearance in Judæa, and sat down before Lachish. The dismay can scarcely be conceived with which, after the total destruction of the sister kingdom by these irresistible invaders, and the transplantation of the people to distant regions, the inhabitants of Jeru