_Salathiel Journeys Far from Jerusalem_
[Sidenote: Salathiel Returns to Consciousness]
When I recovered my senses, all was so much changed round me that I
could scarcely be persuaded that either the past or the present was not
a dream. I had no consciousness of any interval between them, more than
that of having closed my eyes at one instant, to open them at the next.
Yet the curtains of a tent waved round me, in a breeze fragrant with the
breath of roses and balsam-trees. Beyond the gardens and meadows, from
which those odors sprang, a river shone, like a path of lapis lazuli, in
the calm effulgence of the western sun. Tents were pitched, from which
I heard the sounds of pastoral instruments; camels were drinking and
grazing along the riverside; and turbaned men and maidens were ranging
over the fields, or sitting on the banks to enjoy the cool of the
delicious evening.
While I tried to collect my senses and discover whether this was more
than one of those sports of a wayward fancy which tantalize the bed
of the sick mind, I heard a low hymn, and listened to the sounds with
breathless anxiety. The voice I knew at once—it was Miriam’s. But in the
disorder of my brain, and the strange circumstances which had filled the
latter days, in that total feebleness too in which I could not move a
limb or utter a word, a persuasion seized me that I was already beyond
the final boundary of mortals. All before me was like that paradise from
which the crime of our great forefather had driven man into banishment.
I remembered the convulsion of the earth in which I had sunk, and asked
myself, Could man be wrapped in flame and the whirlwind that tore up
mountains like the roots of flowers, and yet live?
[Sidenote: And Learns of His Narrow Escape]
In this perplexity I closed my eyes to collect my thoughts, and probably
exhibited some strong emotion of countenance, for I was roused by a cry:
“He lives! He lives!” I looked up—Miriam stood before me, clasping her
lovely hands with the wildness of joy unspeakable, and shedding tears
that, large and lustrous, fell down her glowing cheeks like dew upon the
pomegranate. She threw herself upon my pillow, kissed my forehead with
lips that breathed new life into me; then, pressing my chill hand between
hers, knelt down and with a look worthy of that heaven on which it was
fixed, radiant with beauty, and holiness, and joy as the face of an
angel, offered up her thanksgiving.
The explanation of the scene that perplexed me was given in a few words,
interrupted only by tears and sighs of delight. With the burst of the
earthquake the supernatural darkness had cleared away. I was flung under
the shelter of one of those caves which abound in the gorges of the
mountains round Jerusalem. Miriam and her infant were flung by my side,
yet unhurt. While I lay insensible in her arms, she, by singular good
fortune, found herself surrounded by a troop of our kinsmen returning
from the city, where terror had suffered but few to remain. They placed
her and her infant on their camels. Me they would have consigned to the
sepulcher of the priests; but Miriam was not to be shaken in her purpose
to watch over me until all hope was gone. I was thus carried along—and
they were now three days on their journey homeward. The landscape before
me was Samaria.
[Sidenote: The Power of Art]
My natural destination would have been the cities of the priests[6]
which lay to the south, bordering upon Hebron. In those thirteen opulent
and noble residences allotted to the higher ministry of the Temple,
they enjoyed all that could be offered by the munificent wisdom of the
state—wealth that raised them above the pressures of life, yet not so
great as to extinguish the desire of intellectual distinction or the love
of the loftier virtues. The means of mental cultivation were provided
for them with more than royal liberality. Copies of the sacred books,
multiplied in every form, and adorned with the finest skill of the pencil
and the sculptor in gold and other precious materials, attested at once
the reverence of the nation for its law, and the perfection to which
it had brought the decorative arts. The works of strangers eminent for
genius or knowledge, or even for the singularity of their subject, were
not less to be found in those stately treasure-houses of mind. There the
priest might relax his spirit from the sublimer studies of his country by
the bold and brilliant epics of Greece, the fantastic passion and figured
beauty of the Persian poesy, or the alternate severity and sweetness of
the Indian drama—that startling union of all lovely images of nature, the
bloom and fragrance of flowers, the hues of the Oriental heaven, and the
perfumes of isles of spice and cinnamon, with the grim and subterranean
terrors of a gigantic idolatry. There he might spread the philosophic
wing from the glittering creations of Grecian metaphysics, to their dark
and early oracles in the East; or, stopping in his central flight, plunge
into the profound of Egyptian mystery, where science lies, like the
mummy, wrapped in a thousand folds that preserve the form, but preserve
it with the living principle gone.
Music, of all pleasures the most intellectual, that glorious painting
to the ear, that rich mastery of the gloomier emotions of our nature,
was studied by the priesthood with a skill that influenced the habits
of the country. How often have my fiercest perturbations sunk at the
sounds that once filled the breezes of Judea! How often, when my brain
was burning and the blood ran through my veins like molten brass, have I
been softened down to painless tears by the chorus from our hills, the
mellow harmonies of harp and horn blending with the voices of the youths
and maidens of Israel! How often have I in the night listened, while
the chant, ascending with a native richness to which the skill of other
nations was dissonance, floated upward like a cloud of incense, bearing
the aspirations of holiness and gratitude to the throne of Him whom man
hath not seen nor can see!
[Sidenote: The Glory of the Past]
But those times are sunk deep in the great gulf that absorbs the
happiness and genius of man. I have since traversed my country in its
length and breadth; I have marked with my weary feet every valley, and
made my restless bed upon every hill from Idumea to Lebanon, and from
the Assyrian sands to the waters of the Mediterranean; yet the harp and
voice were dead. I heard sounds on the hills, but they were the cries of
the villagers flying before some tyrant gatherer of a tyrant’s tribute. I
heard sounds in the midnight, but they were the howl of the wolf and the
yell of the hyena reveling over the naked and dishonored graves, which
the infidel had given, in his scorn, to the people of my fathers.
But the study to which the largest expenditure of wealth and labor was
devoted was, as it ought to be, that of the sacred books of Israel.
It only makes me rebellious against the decrees of fate to think of
the incomparable richness and immaculate character of the volumes over
which I have so often hung, and look upon the diminished and degraded
exterior in which their wisdom now lies before man. Where are now the
cases covered with jewels, the clasps of topaz and diamond; the golden
arks in which the volume of the hope of Israel lay, too precious not to
be humiliated by the contact with even the richest treasure of earth?
Where are the tissued curtains, which hid, as in a sanctuary, that mighty
roll, too sacred to be glanced on by the casual eye? But, the spoiler—the
spoiler! The Arab, the Parthian, the human tiger of the north, that lies
crouching for a thousand years in the sheepfold of Judah! Is there not a
sword? Is there not a judgment? Terribly will it judge the oppressor.
The home of my kinsmen was in the allotment of Naphtali. The original
tribe had revolted in the general schism of the kingdoms of Judah and
Israel, and was swept into the Assyrian captivity. But on the restoration
by Cyrus, fragments of all the captive tribes returned and were suffered
to resume their lands. Misfortune wrought its moral on them; the chief
families pledged their allegiance once more to Judah, and were exemplary
in paying homage to the spirit and ordinances of their religion.
[Sidenote: The Alertness of the Roman]
We hastened through Samaria. The rancorous enmity borne by the Samaritans
to the subjects of Judah, for ages made all intercourse between Jerusalem
and the north difficult. It was often totally interrupted by war; it
was dangerous in peace, and the ferocious character of the population
and the bitter antipathy of the government made it to the Jew a land of
robbers.[7] But among the evils of the Roman conquest was mingled this
good, that it suffered no subordinate tyranny. Its sword cut away at a
blow all those minor oppressions which make the misery of provincial
life. If the mountain robber invaded the plain, as was his custom of old,
the Roman cavalry were instantly on him with the spear, until he took
refuge in the mountains; if he resisted in his native fastnesses, the
legionaries pursued him with torch and sword, stifled him if he remained
in his cave, or stabbed him at its entrance. If quarrels arose between
villages, the cohorts burned them to the ground; and the execution
was done with a promptitude and completeness that less resembled the
ordinary operations of war than the work of superhuman power. The Roman
knowledge of our disturbances was instantaneous. Signals established
on the hills conveyed intelligence with the speed of light, from the
remotest corners of the land to their principal stations. Even in our
subsequent conspiracies, the first knowledge that they had broken out was
often conveyed to their partizans in the next district by the movement
of the Roman troops. Well had they chosen the eagle for their ensign.
They rushed with the eagle’s rapidity on their victim; and when it was
stretched in blood they left the spot of vengeance, as if they had left
it on the wing. Their advance had the rapidity of the most hurried
retreat and the steadiness of the most secure triumph. Their retreat left
nothing behind but the marks of their irresistible power.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Passes through Samaria]
All the armies of the earth have since passed before me. I have seen the
equals of the legions in courage and discipline, and their superiors in
those arms by which human life is at the caprice of ambition. But their
equals I have never seen, in the individual fitness of the soldier for
war; in his fleetness, muscular vigor, and expertness in the use of
his weapons; in his quick adaptation to all the multiplied purposes of
the ancient campaign—from the digging of a trench or the management of
a catapult to the assault of a citadel; in his iron endurance of the
vicissitudes of climate; in the length and regularity of his marches;
or in the rapidity, boldness, and dexterity of his maneuver in the
field. Yet it is but a melancholy tribute to the valor of my countrymen
to record the Roman acknowledgment, that of all the nations conquered
by Rome Judea bore the chain with the haughtiest dignity, and most
frequently and fiercely contested the supremacy of the sword.
Under that stern supremacy, the Samaritan had long rested and flourished
in exemption from the harassing cruelty of petty war. We now passed
with our long caravan unguarded, and moved at will through fields rich
with the luxuriance of an Eastern summer, where our fathers would have
scarcely ventured but with an army. I made no resistance to being thus
led away to a region so remote from my own. To have returned to the
cities of the priests would have but given me unceasing agony. Even the
gates of Jerusalem were to my feelings anathema. The whole fabric of my
mind had undergone a revolution. Like a man tossed at the mercy of the
tempest, I sought but a shore—and all shores were alike to him who must
be an exile forever.