d eloquence
are at his command. Every realm of nature ministers to his stores of
imagery; and his language ranges through every mode of beauty and
sublimity, being sometimes like the pealing of silver bells, and
sometimes like the crashing of avalanches, and sometimes like the
songs of seraphim. He is generally supposed to have been a native of
Jerusalem and to have spent his life within its walls. So identified,
indeed, is he with it, that he is coming to be called Isaiah of
Jerusalem; and a recent expounder of his prophecies says that
Jerusalem was more to him than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal,
or Florence to Dante. But, at some period of his life, he must have
had ample experience also of a country life; because the aspects of
the country are mirrored in his pages with incomparable charm.

He lets us see nature, as it existed in his day, both wild in the
forest and wilderness, and cultivated around the abodes of men; and he
paints for us the figures of the country people themselves and the
labours they went forth to. We see in his pages the trees of the wood
moved by the wind; the willows by the water-courses; the fresh
branches sprouting from the stock of the pollard oak or terebinth. We
hear the doves mourning from the depths of the thicket, and see the
roe, chased by the hunter, disappearing within its shelter, and even
the schoolboy rifling the birds' nests so ruthlessly that "there was
none that moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped." We see the
swarms of bees and flies resting on the branches in the summer heat;
the ploughshare lying in the furrow; the tow and the distaff; the ox
turning its head to be patted by the hand of its owner, and the ass
trotting off at feeding-time to its master's crib. The prophet looks
with a specially observant and sympathetic eye on the toils of
men--the woodman thinning the trees of the forest; the carpenter, with
saw and axe, turning to his own uses the sycamore and the cedar; the
builder among his bricks and stones; and the farmer, on the exposed
height of the threshing-floor, winnowing his corn with the shovel and
the fan. As is usual in the Bible, the shepherd is portrayed with
special honour, whether he calls out his neighbours to frighten away
the lion from his flock or is seen gathering the lambs in his arms and
carrying them in his bosom. But most of all does the poet-prophet love
to linger in the vineyard, marking accurately all the operations of
the vi