EASTERN SCENES ILLUSTRATIVE OF PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS. "And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left. And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts went up over. all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.” Exod. x. 12-15. The following is taken from the Leeds Mercury for November 3rd, 1868: "We saw that great scourge of the country, a host of unfledged locusts, rolling and tumbling over each other in small waves. I walked in them to the depth of seven inches. They cannot fly before they arrive at a certain age, and are, if anything, more destructive than those that are winged, devouring everything that grows, even down to the roots. In this stage the Dutch call them 'voetgangers,' or infantry. They generally travel towards the east, hopping along at the rate of two miles an hour, and when they fly they are generally carried away with the wind towards the westward, alighting wherever they are attracted by the cornfields or the pasturage. I have known them myself to devour, in two hours, a field of corn, from which the proprietor expected to reap 300 muids (about 600 bushels)." Nothing stays the progress of these destructive insects. 76 Eastern Scenes Illustrative of Biblical Allusions. They march in myriads over the bodies of their own species, sometimes to the depth of more than a foot, and arriving at a stream they plunge in, and the foremost being drowned, form a bridge for the rest to cross over in safety; many are thus destroyed, but the great bulk of the column effect their passage. Though these insects are very destructive, yet, at the same time, they are of some service to man and beast; for they are eaten with avidity by horses, oxen, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, as well as by the elephant and other wild animals; and last, not least, they constitute an important article of food for man himself, all the natives of South Africa considering locusts as great delicacies. THRASHING THE CORN. "Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be thrashing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen." Isa. xxviii. 28. Our distinguished countryman, Austen H. Layard, M.P., who is connected with the present cabinet, and to whom the students of the Bible are deeply obligated, on account of his discoveries in connection with the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, speaking of the mode of thrashing corn as it obtains in the east, says: "The process adopted is simple, and nearly such as it was in patriarchal times. The children either drive horses round and round over the heaps, or standing upon a sledge stuck full of sharp flints on the under part, are drawn by oxen over the scattered sheaves. Such were 'the thrashing sledges armed with teeth' mentioned by Isaiah (xli. 15). In no instance are the animals muzzled. 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn' (Deut. xxv. 4.); but they linger to pick up a scanty mouthful as they are urged on by the boys and young girls, to whom the duties of the threshing floor are chiefly assigned. The grain is winnowed by the men and women, who throw the corn and straw together into the air with a wooden shovel, leaving the wind to carry away the chaff, whilst the seed falls to the ground. The wheat is then raked into heaps, and left on the threshing floor until the tithe-gatherer has taken his portion. The straw is stored for the winter as provender for the cattle." WOMEN'S RINGS AND NOSE JEWELS. "The rings, and nose jewels.” Isa. iii. 21. On one occasion a celebrated traveller paid a visit to a harem, where he found assembled the wives and daughters of a man of distinction, his sons, and the elders of the tribe, who had met together for some particular purpose. "Amongst them," he says, 66 were several of considerable beauty. They were all dressed in the usual long blue shirt, and striped or black abba, with a black handkerchief confined by a band of spun camel's wool. Massive rings of silver, adorned with gems and coral, hung from their noses, and bracelets in the same metal, and also set with precious stones, encircled their wrists and ankles. Some wore necklaces of coins, coarse amber, agate, cornelian, beads, and cylinders, mostly Assyrian relics picked up amongst ruins after rain. These ornaments were confined to the unmarried girls and to the youngest and prettiest wives, who, on waxing old, are obliged to transfer them to a more favoured successor." Though it is curious that no representation of these rings has hitherto been found in the Assyrian sculptures, yet Mr. Layard says that he found one of them sculptured on a fragment at Kharsabad. FRIEND RIVERS. THE FUNERAL OF CROMWELL. THE hearse of Anne was still standing over her grave when her son's overthrow placed the Royal Abbey for twelve years in the hands of the Commonwealth and the Protector. How far more revolutionary the Reformation was than the civil wars may be judged from the fact that the Abbey, which so nearly perished in the first instance, was never threatened in the second. The royal monuments, which cruelly suffered under Henry VIII., remained, so far as we know, uninjured under Cromwell; and the Abbey, so far from losing its attractions, drew into it not only, as we shall see, the lesser magnates of the Commonwealth, but also the Protector himself. Nothing shows more completely how entirely he regarded himself as the founder of a royal dynasty than his determination that he and his whole family should lie amongst the kings of England. Already, at the time of Essex's funeral, in 1643, the public mind was prepared for his burial there, "with the immortal turf of Naseby under his head." Three members of his family were interred there before his death -his sister Jane, who married General Disbrowe; his venerable mother, Elizabeth Steward, through whom his descent was traced to the brother of the founder of the Stuarts; and Elizabeth Claypole, his favourite daughter. The procession of the Protector's funeral from Somerset House was of royal magnificence, and the coffin was laid in a vault prepared at the east end of Henry VII.'s Chapel, which many years afterwards was still called "Oliver's,' or "Oliver Cromwell's vault." It is said that the actual interment, from the state of the corpse, had taken place before; and this mystery probably fostered the fables which, according to the fancies of the narrators, described the body as thrown into the Thames, or laid in the field of Naseby, or in the coffin of Charles I. at Windsor, or "carried away in the tempest the night before." The fact, however, of his interment at Westminster is proved beyond doubt by the savage ceremonial which followed the Restoration. Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were dug up, on the eve of the 30th of January, 1661, and on the following day dragged to Tyburn, hanged (with their faces turned towards Whitehall), decapitated, and buried under the gallows. The plate found on the breast of the corpse, with the inscription, passed into the possession of the serjeant who took up the body, from whom it descended, through his daughter, Mrs. Giffard, into the hands of the Hobarts, and from them to the present Earl de Grey. The head was planted on the top of Westminster Hall, on one side, as Ireton's on the other side, of Bradshaw's, which was set up in the centre, as over the place in which he had passed judgment, "to the becoming spectacle of his treason, where, on that pinnacle and legal advancement, it is fit to leave this ambitious wretch." No stone or monument marks the spot where Oliver lay beneath the great east window. Elizabeth Claypole, alone of all those who then were buried amongst the kings, still remains in her original sepulchre.—Memorials of Westminster Abbey. ENIGMA XVI. Come now-to the gates of that palace advance, Then to Puy-de-Dome turn, near an ancient town there, Nor the land of the Gaul quit, when these you've admir'd, То pour forth your Next cross o'er to England, and rest in that town, * Surnamed the Martyr. |