"And everybody praised the Duke

Who this great fight did win."

"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 't was a famous victory."

XXXIV.

Now,

SENNACHERIB'S DOWNFALL.

II. KINGS, CHAPTERS XVIII. AND XIX.

OW, in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, did Sennacherib, king of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.

And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me; that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house.

At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah, with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up, and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field.

And when they had called to the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the

household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder.

And Rab-shakeh said unto them, "Speak ye now to Hezekiah,Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria,' What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?

"Thou sayest, (but they are but vain words,) ‘I have counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me?

"Now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, unto all that trust on him.

"But if ye say unto me, 'We trust in the LORD our God: is not that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away; and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?'

"Now therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord, the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.

"How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen ?

"Am I now come up without the LORD against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, 'Go up against this land, and destroy it.''

And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.

And he sent Eliakim, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

And they said unto him, "Thus saith Hezekiah, ‘This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy.

"It may be the LORD thy God will hear all the words of Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, hath sent to reproach the living God; and will reprove the words which the LORD thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.'

So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

6

And Isaiah said unto them, "Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

"Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.'

And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, "O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth!

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Lord, bow down thine ear, and hear: open, Lord, thine eyes, and see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God.

"Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only."

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.

And it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch, his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia.

From The Bible.

XXXV. THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

LORD BYRON.

BY LORD BYRON.

LORD GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON (17881824) was a great English poet who lived in the early part of this century. Byron was deformed in body, erratic in mind, ardent and impetuous in spirit, without fixed principles or the habit of self-restraint; yet he had noble impulses, and was unquestionably a man of brilliant genius. "Childe Harold" is perhaps his finest poem, although he wrote many others of marked merit and beauty. Byron fought at Missolonghi, with the Greeks, to throw off the Turkish yoke. He contracted a fever there, from which he died.

THE Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host, with their banners, at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath flown, That host, on the morrow, lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

ROLL

XXXVI. THE OCEAN.

BY LORD BYRON.

- roll!

on, thou deep and dark blue ocean Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin - his control

Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

Where, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groanWithout a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.