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lar the two forms, _Mob_ and _Mobile vulgus_ are used interchangeably and indifferently through several pages consecutively--just as _Canter_ and _Canterbury gallop_, of which the one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent advantage of propriety or elegance, dropped into total disuse. _Sortes_, it is a clear case, inherited from Socrates his distressing post of target-general for the arrows of disputatious Christendom. But how came Socrates by that distinction? I cannot have a doubt that it was strength of tradition that imputed such a use of the Socratic name and character to Plato. The reader must remember that, although Socrates was no _mythus_, and least of all could be such, to his own leading disciple, that was no reason why he should not be treated as a _mythus_. In Wales, some nine or ten years ago, _Rebecca_, as the mysterious and masqued redresser of public wrongs, was rapidly passing into a _mythical_ expression for that universal character of Rhadamanthian avenger or vindicator. So of Captain Rock, in Ireland. So of Elias amongst the Jews (_when Elias shall come_), as the sublime, mysterious, and in some degree pathetic expression for a great teacher lurking amongst the dreadful mists. _VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE--THE POLITICS OF THE SITUATION._ You read in the Hebrew Scriptures of a man who had thirty sons, all of whom 'rode on white asses'; the riding on white asses is a circumstance that expresses their high rank or distinction--that all were princes. In Syria, as in Greece and almost everywhere, white was the regal symbolic colour.[7] And any mode of equitation, from the far inferior wealth of ancient times, implied wealth. Mules or asses, besides that they were so far superior a race in Syria no less than in Persia, to furnish a favourite designation for a warlike hero, could much more conveniently be used on the wretched roads, as yet found everywhere, until the Romans began to treat road-making as a regular business of military pioneering. In this case, therefore, there were thirty sons of one man, and all provided with princely establishments. Consequently, to have thirty s
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