tormy scenes, we see
the difference between a meek spirit and a craven one. He was always
ready to intercede; he never "reviles the ruler," nor transgresses the
limits of courtesy toward his superior in rank; and yet he never
falters, nor compromises, nor fails to represent worthily the awful
Power he represents.

In the series of sharp contrasts, all the true dignity is with the
servant of God, all the meanness and the shame with the proud king, who
begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on him, and ends by the most
ignominious of surrenders, crowned with the most abortive of treacheries
and the most abject of defeats.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Oddly enough, the same historian already quoted, relating the story
of the same day at Leipsic, says of Napoleon's dialogue with M. de
Merfeld, that he "used an expression which, if uttered at the Congress
of Prague, would have changed his lot and ours. Unfortunately, it was
now too late."

[19] Such is probably not the meaning in Ps. lxxviii. 49 (see R.V.),
though from it the tradition may have sprung.

CHAPTER XI.

_THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED._

xi. 1-10.

The eleventh chapter is, strictly speaking, a supplement to the tenth:
the first verses speak, as if in parenthesis, of a revelation made
before the ninth plague, but held over to be mentioned in connection
with the last, which it now announces; and the conversation with Pharaoh
is a continuation of the same in which they mutually resolved to see
each other's face no more. To account for the confidence of Moses, we
are now told that God had revealed to him the close approach of the
final blow, so long foreseen. In spite of seeming delays, the hour of
the promise had arrived; in spite of his long reluctance, the king
should even thrust them out; and then the order and discipline of their
retreat would exhibit the advantages gained by expectation, by promises
ofttimes disappointed, but always, like a false alarm which tries the
readiness of a garrison, exhibiting the weak points in their
organisation, and carrying their preparations farther.

The command given already to the women (iii. 22) is now extended to them
all--that they should ask of the terror-stricken people such portable
things as, however precious, poorly requited their generations of unpaid
and cruel toil. (It has been already shown that the word absurdly
rendered "borrow" means to ask; and is the same as when Sisera _asked_
water and Jael gave