Why is his chariot so long in coming? (Jud. v. 28.)
--would not have been out of place in the choral service of the most
sanguinary god in the Polynesian pantheon.

With respect to the cannibalism which the Tongans occasionally
practised, Mariner says:--

Although a few young ferocious warriors chose to imitate what
they considered a mark of courageous fierceness in a
neighbouring nation, it was held in disgust by everybody else
(vol. ii. p. 171).

That the moral standard of Tongan life was less elevated than that
indicated in the "Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.) may be
freely admitted. But then the evidence that this Book of the Covenant,
and even the ten commandments as given in Exodus, were known to the
Israelites of the time of Samuel and Saul, is (to say the least) by no
means conclusive. The Deuteronomic version of the fourth commandment is
hopelessly discrepant from that which stands in Exodus. Would any later
writer have ventured to alter the commandments as given from Sinai, if
he had had before him that which professed to be an accurate statement
of the "ten words" in Exodus? And if the writer of Deuteronomy had not
Exodus before him, what is the value of the claim of the version of the
ten commandments therein contained to authenticity? From one end to
the other of the books of Judges and Samuel, the only "commandments
of Jahveh" which are specially adduced refer to the prohibition of the
worship of other gods, or are orders given _ad hoc,_ and have nothing to
do with questions of morality.

In Polynesia, the belief in witchcraft, in the appearance of spiritual
beings in dreams, in possession as the cause of diseases, and in omens,
prevailed universally. Mariner tells a story of a woman of rank who was
greatly attached to King Finow, and who, for the space of six months
after his death, scarcely ever slept elsewhere than on his grave, which
she kept carefully decorated with flowers:--

"One day she went, with the deepest affliction, to the house of Mo-oonga
Toobo, the widow of the deceased chief, to communicate what had happened
to her at the _fytoca_ [grave] during several nights, and which caused
her the greatest anxiety. She related that she had dreamed that the
late How [King] appeared to her and, with a countenance full of
disappointment, asked why there yet remained at Vavaoo so many
evil-designing persons; for he declared that, since he had been at
Bolotoo, his spirit had b