Joab possessed a great general. Victory crowned his campaigns. He conquered the future capital of his country, and vanquished the Philistines, the Syrians, Moab, Edom, and Ammon. He promoted the worship of Jehovah, patronized prophets and priests, and paved the way for the erection of the temple of Zion. He founded a dynasty which reigned upward of four hundred years. When this dynasty decayed, he naturally became the great kingly hero upon whom the patriotic and pious looked back with ardent veneration. He became the model king of history, and by his standard—a partly fictitious standard—the merits of his successors were measured. His crimes were palliated. His legendary exploits and excellences were epically expanded. Creations of his successors were ascribed to him. Artistic inventions and literary productions of more refined ages than his were attributed to himself or to the singers and poets of his court. He was then not only a great conqueror and ruler: he was a poet and musical genius, an organizer of choirs and inventor of vocal instruments, a composer of hymns and religious instructor. Psalms in which really God-fearing men, on or near the tottering throne of Judah, poured out their feelings of adoration, of gratitude and hope, or of repentance, were inscribed with his Each successive generation added to these prayers or psalms of David, until, when the sacred literary collections of Israel were closedcenturies after the extinction of the Davidic dynasty-their number exceeded threescore and ten, according to the superscriptions.

name.

The worthlessness of these superscriptions has been fully established. Nor was it a difficult task for criticism to do it. Not a single one of the psalms ascribed to David contains distinct allusions to events in his life. Hardly any of them agree with his character and disposition as manifested in the historical sketches of the books of Samuel. The sentiments and religious views expressed in all of them are those of a different age. Some refer clearly to times and circumstances other than his.

Yet the traditional image of David created by the main tenor of the psalms marked with his name, by a few higher traits of him discernible in the narratives of the books of Samuel, and by the systematic sanctification of his character in Chronicles, has been so powerful a check in rightly defining his place in the ethical and literary development of his nation that even such critics of our times as Ewald, Hitzig, and Schrader have still accepted his authorship of about a dozen psalms.

is Psalm xviii.,

Among the very few accepted as Davidic mainly, it must be supposed, on account of its being also incorporated in II. Samuel; for its contents befit neither David's character nor any situation in his life. The superscription, which states it to have been sung by David on the day when Jehovah saved him "from all his ene

mies and from the hand of Saul," refutes itself, for there was no such day in the life of the Judean king, whose perils, beginning with Saul's hostility, ended only with his life; and the closing words, which speak of Jehovah's kindness to "David and his posterity," distinctly enough point to a later king of the Davidic dynasty as author. E. Meier, reviewing this and the other psalms claimed for David by Ewald, reaches the conclusion that there is not a single one in the whole collection which could be ascribed to him on good critical grounds. And the Dutch school of criticism fully indorses this view. "Probably not one of the psalms is from David's hand," says Kuenen. Oort, in showing the "impossibility" of reconciling the David of Psalms with the David of history, remarks, "The superscriptions of the psalms are entirely untrustworthy; and the poems themselves date from periods at which the Israelites had pondered far more deeply upon the nature of true piety, and cherished far other thoughts as to phenomena of spiritual life, than was the case in David's time.' "It is highly probable," says Knappert, "that not one of the seventy-three psalms that bear his name is really his."

The son of Jesse being thus fairly stripped of his laurels as a psalmist, we may also presume that the psalm-like song given in the twenty-third chapter of II. Samuel does not contain "the last words of David," but words of a more righteous later king, to the beginning of which a redactor unguardedly prefixed, by way of explanation, "This is the utterance of David, the son of Jesse."

Sarah Jane Lippincott.

BORN in Pompey, N. Y., 1823.

CHOOSE.

MY tender thoughts go forth, beloved,

Upon the pleasant morning hours,

With songs of mated birds, and sighs

From virgin hearts of opening flowers.

Full laden with love's daintiest store,

Each smallest thought should come to thee,

As from the jasmine's hidden cell

Flies home the richly burdened bee.

My joyous thoughts go forth, beloved,
Upon the golden airs of noon,

With languid sweets from roses rare

That flush and faint through ardent June.

With all the swiftness of the streams
That fling out laughter as they run,
With all the brightness of the day,
With all the passion of the sun.

But when along the cloud-hung west
The purple lights grow pale and die-
When waves of sunshine roll no more,

And all one shade the corn-fields lie

When twilight veils the hills, and gives
A deeper mystery to the sea-
Then, O beloved! my saddened heart

Yearns through the distance unto thee.

And when the winds come o'er the sands
To sweep my lonely garden through,
To bow the saintly lily's head,

And spill the violet's cup of dew

And when they higher mount, and beat
The elm's long arms against the eaves,
Troubling the robin in its nest,

And making tumult in the leaves

Then in the dusk I seem to hear

Strange sounds and whisperings of dread,

And every murmur in the grass

Seems some unfriendly spirit's tread.

I shrink within the shadowed porch,
A nameless fear oppresseth me:
Oh, then my heart, like some lost child,
Calls through the darkness unto thee!

So, dear, of all my life of love,

Choose thou the best and sweetest part: The glow of day, or gloom of night; The pride or terror of my heart;

The glad, exultant hope that fills
The morning with its joyous strain,
Or twilight's haunted loneliness,

That stretches out its arms in vain.

Would sigh or carol move thee most ?
And were thy tenderest kiss bestowed
On eyes that droop with tears, or lips
With careless laughter overflowed?

So questions, love, the foolish heart
That would thy secret choice divine;
Yet idly questions, knowing well

Thou canst not choose, since all is thine.

1870.

Francis Parkman.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1823.

NEW ENGLAND AND NEW FRANCE.

[Pioneers of France in the New World. 1865.-Twenty-fifth Edition. Revised. 1886.]

NEW

EW FRANCE was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes of savage retainers.

Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,-a body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren; the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair. By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this antagonism;-Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Each followed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its natural results. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan commonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land of material progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach; patient industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of the four Gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock. Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtile and searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grew upon the gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; but she has not been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of character which often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations far less prosperous.

We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt to crush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under the curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people compassed by influ ences of the wildest freedom,-whose schools were the forest and the sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose daily life a lesson of lawless independence. But this fierce spirit had its vent. The story of New France is from the first a story of war: of war-for so her founders believed-with the adversary of mankind himself; war with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths; war with the encroaching powers of Heresy and of England. Her brave, unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and the soldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong to hopes vast and vague, ill-restricted powers, and stations of command.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld their cause, leading to battle a vassal population, warlike as themselves. Borne down by numbers from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last; and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is felt through every nation of the civilized world.

The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for Civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil.