The character of the
tribe was still the same--their course through all years was unaltered.
And now, while Amalek has perished and the Jew survives, we can form no
just estimate of that national feud. Haman was a type of his
race--artful, cruel, treacherous, and bloody; and what the Roman was to
Hannibal, what the ancient Persian was to Greece, what the Turk is to
modern Greece, what Russia is to the Pole, such was the Amalekite to the
Jew.

While Esther had manifested her sense of dependence upon the eternal
Ruler of nations, and her faith and reliance upon the God of her
fathers, by humbling herself before him and relying upon his protection
and interposition in this hour of darkness, she showed, too, a knowledge
of the human heart, not often acquired at her age; an instinctive
insight into the character and the motives of those around her, with the
power of adapting herself to circumstances, that has seldom been
displayed in one so young, combined with so many of the higher qualities
of the woman.

She knew the weak point in the character of Ahasuerus, and she forgot
not the power of beauty, the influence of personal charms, as she
arrayed her fair form in the rich and splendid vestments that so well
became her, and summoned all the aid of oriental art and elegance to her
toilette, that her presumption might be forgiven in her loveliness--that
favour won by her beauty might be extended to her nation; and if she
felt the hope of pleasing, as she surveyed herself in the polished
metallic mirror, decked with the magnificence of a royal bride and
adorned with the gifts of him whose favour she would seek, her heart
might have sunk too at the remembrance of the favour she had once won
and lost. In assuming the crown placed upon her brow by Ahasuerus,
there was a tacit claim to her royal rights; for that gemmed circlet was
not only a badge of rank, but a pledge of affection--a token of honour
and royal favour, which elevated her above the throng of beauties who
filled the courts of the palace. Had she arrayed herself in sackcloth,
had she appeared as a mourner, an afflicted suppliant, she would
probably have found the royal voluptuary more anxious to banish one who
disturbed his pleasures, than to redress the grievances that appealed to
his justice.

Yet it must have been with trembling limbs and a beating heart that she
stood before Ahasuerus; and, by entering his presence unbidden, she made
her mute appeal to his me