ee in the text what there is to justify all this
huddle of vulgar consternation.

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made a great
feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the
princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows--

"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's
palace; and the _king_ saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the
_king's_ countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so
that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one
against another."

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but
that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar,
that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being
seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who
merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related
to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be
astonished; _i.e._ at the trouble and the change of countenance in
their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the
scroll, which the king saw. He recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream
to the King of Egypt. "Then was the part of the hand sent from him
[the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm
as past.

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the miracle? this
message to a royal conscience, singly expressed--for it was said,
"thy kingdom is divided,"--simultaneously impressed upon the fancies
of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it neither directly nor
grammatically? But admitting the artist's own version of the story,
and that the sight was seen also by the thousand courtiers--let it
have been visible to all Babylon--as the knees of Belshazzar were
shaken, and his countenance troubled, even so would the knees of every
man in Babylon, and their countenances, as of an individual man, been
troubled; bowed, bent down, so would they have remained, stupor-fixed,
with no thought of struggling with that inevitable judgment.

Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be shown in every
picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant individualities
in a "Marriage at Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture
and colour of the weddi