with the old-fashioned Italian cloaks worn in bad weather, which are very little in use among the Persians, with silk stockings according to our European mode. He went singly singly on horseback, according to the custom of the great, followed by the principal people of his household, without any mark of his being a prisoner, excepting that he had, on each side a file of Persian musqueteers to guard him.””

There is certainly a good deal of resemblance, between the manner in which the Messenians treated Philopoemen, and that in which the Persians treated the king of Ormuz above eight score years ago; but I would rather apply the account to the elucidation of a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah, in which he describes the treatment in part, which Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was to experience upon his being made a captive by the Babylonians, which he thus prophetically sets forth, according to our version: If thou refuse to go forth, this is the word that the LORD hath shewed me. And behold, all the women that are left in the king of Judah's house, shall be brought forth to the king of Babylon's princes; and those women shall say, Thy friends have set thee on, and have prevailed against thee: thy feet are sunk in the mire, and they are turned away back. Jeremiah xxxviii. 21, 22.

Now these bitter speeches much better suit the lips of women belonging to the conquering nation, singing before a captive prince, than

Lett. 16, tome 6, p. 32, 33.

of his own wives or concubines. If we are to understand them in the sense in which they are commonly understood, those ladies must have had no feeling thus to insult their king, their husband, in the depth of distress; and who had shown such a dread of being insulted by those vulgar Jews, who had fallen away to the Chaldeans, ver. 19, I am afraid of the Jews that are fallen away to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand, and they mock me.

It may be imagined, that it was a just rebuke upon him, that had been so afraid of the reproaches of some of the rabble of his own nation, as on that account to refuse obedience to the direction of a Prophet of GoD, that he should be insulted by the women of his own haram; but it is not natural to suppose they should have an opportunity of this kind, after the king had left them in the palace, and they came into the power of the princes of the king of Babylon, their prey, and to do honour to their harams; and if they had such an opportunity, it is not very likely they should be so unfeeling. But it is perfectly natural to suppose, that the women that sung before Zedekiah, when carrying from town to town, till he was brought to Riblah, where the king of Babylon then resided, might make use of such taunts. That they are women, that sing and dance before captive princes, appears from this account of the Arab king of Ormuz; and the Hebrew word here made use of, shows that those that used these insulting words were fe

males; but it is not certain that the word hennah, translated those, so signifies, (those women shall say,) unless we depend on the certainty of the Hebrew points, since the same letters hinnch, with different points signify behold, Behold, I say,' the women of the king of Judah's house shall be brought forth to the king of Babylon's princes; and behold women (such as are wont to sing on public occasions) shall say, (in those processional songs,) the men of thy peace have set thee on, &c. Nay the same points may be retained under the letters, and the word then may be understood not as a pronoun, but an adverb, and be rendered here: "Behold, I say, thy women shall be given up to the possession and the arms of thine enemies; and here the women that are wont to sing on public occasions, and to celebrate their praises, shall sing before thee such words as shall pierce thy heart. So in the following verse Zedekiah and his women are supposed to be separated from each other, as in fact they were, the king flying from the city, as far as the plains of Jericho, before he was overtaken, while his women fell immediately into the hands of the princes of Babylon.

See 2 Chron. xx. 2, and Noldius on this compound word.

So the word is used in this sense, Gen. xxi. 23, and is so translated in our version; and is used again in the sense of here in the 29th verse, according to Noldius.

OBSERVATION LXXI.

Dust very injurious in the East-Of the bitter Waters, &c.

SOME part at least of the sea-coast, between St. John d'Acre and Joppa, is liable to be very much incommoded by clouds of dust, which arise from time to time: I would recommend it then to the curious to consider, whether some city, or perhaps some district there, may not be what the Prophet Micah calls the house of dust, ch. i. 10. In the house of Aphrah roll thyself in the dust; for we find in the margin, that the house of Aphrah may be translated the house of dust.

I would verify the fact, that that coast, or part of that coast, is wont to be incommoded with dust, by two quotations from Vinisauf, who has given us an account of the expedition of our Richard the First, into the Holy Land. In p. 349 he says, "the army passed along near the sea, which was on the right hand, and the Turks observed all our motions from the mountains on the left. Suddenly the air was disturbed by the coming on of a dangerous cloud;" when it seems, the enemy took that advantage, and fell upon the Croisade army. This happened, he tells us, when they came to a straight place."

"Exercitus itinerabat juxta mare, quod cis erat à dextris, et gens Turcorum à sinistris omnes gestus nostros à

He does not tell us, whether this was a cloud of dust, or a thick mist; but it should seem most probably to have been dust; especially when we remark what is said in a succeeding page, Journeying, they were thrown into great perturbation, by the air's being thickened with dust as well as by the heat of the scason. This was on the 7th of September.

Can it be any wonder that Micah has described some great town on this coast, or perhaps an extensive district, as the house of dust, and called its inhabitants to roll themselves in the dust in token of anguish of heart?

It is well known that some large towns, in which there were many houses, have been called by a name which expresses one single house, with an epithet adjoined, which marks out some distinguishing property of that town. Thus the native town of David was called Bethlehem, the house of bread, on account of the fertility of the corn-lands about it; another town was called Bethel, the house of God, because of a divine appearance there to Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 19. For a similar reason, a town built in that strait, where the dust so terribly incommoded the Croisaders, of the time of Richard the First, might have been called the house of dust; or a town built in the place where that army was afterwards, on Sept. 7th.

montanis prospiciebant. Ingruente subito nebula periculosa turbabatur aer." Hist. Anglicanæ Scrip. quinque, vol. 2, p. 349.

* Obducto nubilo pulveris acre æstuabant itinerantes, et insuper fervore temporis," p. 360, or rather 356.