nations.

We think of her always as old, withered, thirsting for blood, and
incapable of the finer sentiments and all the softer emotions of human
kind. There was a time in which she shone as the centre of a splendid
and luxurious court, where minstrels sang to her and poets praised her
and princes flattered her, while statesmen confessed her influence and
cabinets adopted her plans. Fascinating, artful, able, ambitious, and
unprincipled, she may be regarded as chief among many of the most
celebrated of this class of her sex of ancient or modern days.

There have been queens, not of heathen lands and barbarous Asia, but of
refined and christianized Europe, upon whose memories rest quite as dark
shadows as those which cover the character of the Queen of Israel. It is
sad to remember how many of the most atrocious acts which disgrace the
annals of our race are to be traced to the influence of female ambition,
jealousy, hate, or revenge. Larger possessions than that of the vineyard
of Naboth have been obtained by perjury and blood; and few modern courts
could consistently condemn the principles or the policy by which the
monarchs of Israel attempted to consolidate and perpetuate their
dominion. In the estimation of many statesmen and many historians,
greatness has sanctified all the means by which power is either to be
attained or preserved, and the splendour of the court has fully atoned
for all the oppression of the people.

While she was fitted to co-operate with her husband, and ready to
promote his designs and to embrace the policy which had guided the court
of Israel, she soon assumed and ever maintained that influence which the
stronger mind, the more powerful will, ever exerts over the inferior and
weaker. Through all his reign, Ahab ever deferred to her; and while she
goaded him onward in his career of crime, she stimulated and upheld him
by her daring defiance of the commands and threatenings of the prophets
of the Lord. She possessed all the energy, power, and constancy which
ever belongs to minds of a high order, and which fit them for greatness
in virtue or crime--insuring widespread usefulness or leading to
desperate wickedness. She never was turned from her course. She never
faltered, trembled, or hesitated in the pursuit of her object. She
witnessed, unawed and unmoved, miracles of judgment and of mercy. She
saw unpitying a land consumed by drought and a people perishing by
famine; and when the parched ea