butes of
a Supreme God,--the esoteric wisdom from which even a Pythagoras drew
his inspiration; possibly tasting, with generals and nobles, all the
pleasures of sin. But whether in pleasure or honor, the soul of Moses,
fortified by the maternal instructions of his early days,--for his
mother was doubtless a good as well as a brave woman,--soars beyond his
circumstances, and he seeks to avenge the wrongs of his brethren. Not
wisely, however, for he slays a government official, and is forced to
flee,--a necessity which we can hardly comprehend in view of his rank
and power, unless it revealed all at once to the astonished king his
Hebrew birth, and his dangerous sympathies with an oppressed people, the
act showing that he may have sought, in his earnest soul, to break their
intolerable bonds.

Certainly Moses aspires prematurely to be a deliverer. He is not yet
prepared for such a mighty task. He is too impulsive and inexperienced.
It must need be that he pass through a period of preparation, learn
patience, mature his knowledge, and gain moral force, which preparation
could be best made in severe contemplation; for it is in retirement and
study that great men forge the weapons which demolish principalities and
powers, and master those _principia_ which are the foundation of thrones
and empires. So he retires to the deserts of Midian, among a scattered
pastoral people, on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and is received by
Jethro, a priest of Midian, whose flocks he tends, and whose daughter
he marries.

The land of Midian, to which he fled, is not fertile like Egypt, nor
rich in unnumbered monuments of pride and splendor, with pyramids for
mausoleums, and colossal statues to perpetuate kingly memories. It is
not scented with flowers and variegated with landscapes of beauty and
fertility, but is for the most part, with here and there a patch of
verdure, a land of utter barrenness and dreariness, and, as Hamilton
paints it, "a great and terrible wilderness, where no soft features
mitigated the unbroken horror, but dark and brown ridges, red peaks like
pyramids of fire; no rounded hillocks or soft mountain curves, but
monstrous and misshapen cliffs, rising tier above tier, and serrated for
miles into rugged grandeur, and grooved by the winter torrents cutting
into the veins of the fiery rock: a land dreary and desolate, yet
sublime in its boldness and ruggedness,--a labyrinth of wild and blasted
mountains, a terrific and