d still. Did you
in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect
what he was bid stand still _for_? or if not--will you please look--and
what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw,
rejoicing?

'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah--and fought against
Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of
Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls
that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to
Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote
all the country of the hills and of the south--and of the vale and of
the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly
destroyed all that breathed--as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'

Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear _these_
texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the
world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it
has always preferred parting first with its Life--and God has taken it
at its word. But Death is not _His_ Begotten Son, for all that; nor is
the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working
out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for
working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology
perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;--neither is the
Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer'
utter thunders of God--which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to
learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been
better at this day for _you_, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine
shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines
that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own
character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of
war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George
Fox--its folly shown practically by Penn. But the _compassion_ of the
pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its
stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither
Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of
men that

'The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.'[188]

Such pacific verse would not inde