laws which, from the awful summit of
these surrounding mountains, the Father of all had Himself delivered for
the government of mankind? These Arabian laws regulated his life.
And the wanderings of an Arabian tribe in this 'great and terrible
wilderness,' under the immediate direction of the Creator, sanctified by
His miracles, governed by His counsels, illumined by His presence, had
been the first and guiding history that had been entrusted to his young
intelligence, from which it had drawn its first pregnant examples
of human conduct and divine interposition, and formed its first dim
conceptions of the relations between man and God. Why, then, he had a
right to be here! He had a connection with these regions; they had a
hold upon him. He was not here like an Indian Brahmin, who visits Europe
from a principle of curiosity, however rational or however refined. The
land which the Hindoo visits is not his land, nor his father's land; the
laws which regulate it are not his laws, and the faith which fills its
temples is not the revelation that floats upon his sacred Ganges. But
for this English youth, words had been uttered and things done, more
than thirty centuries ago, in this stony wilderness, which influenced
his opinions and regulated his conduct every day of his life, in that
distant and seagirt home, which, at the time of their occurrence, was
not as advanced in civilisation as the Polynesian groups or the islands
of New Zealand. The life and property of England are protected by the
laws of Sinai. The hard-working people of England are secured in every
seven days a day of rest by the laws of Sinai. And yet they persecute
the Jews, and hold up to odium the race to whom they are indebted for
the sublime legislation which alleviates the inevitable lot of the
labouring multitude!

And when that labouring multitude cease for a while from a toil which
equals almost Egyptian bondage, and demands that exponent of the
mysteries of the heart, that soother of the troubled spirit, which
poetry can alone afford, to whose harp do the people of England fly for
sympathy and solace? Who is the most popular poet in this country? Is
he to be found among the Mr. Wordsworths and the Lord Byrons, amid
sauntering reveries or monologues of sublime satiety? Shall we seek him
among the wits of Queen Anne? Even to the myriad-minded Shakespeare can
we award the palm? No; the most popular poet in England is the sweet
singer of Israel. Since the