lar the two forms, _Mob_ and _Mobile vulgus_ are
used interchangeably and indifferently through several pages
consecutively--just as _Canter_ and _Canterbury gallop_, of which the
one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one
period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore
the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience
favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be
slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent
advantage of propriety or elegance, dropped into total disuse. _Sortes_,
it is a clear case, inherited from Socrates his distressing post of
target-general for the arrows of disputatious Christendom. But how came
Socrates by that distinction? I cannot have a doubt that it was strength
of tradition that imputed such a use of the Socratic name and character
to Plato. The reader must remember that, although Socrates was no
_mythus_, and least of all could be such, to his own leading disciple,
that was no reason why he should not be treated as a _mythus_. In Wales,
some nine or ten years ago, _Rebecca_, as the mysterious and masqued
redresser of public wrongs, was rapidly passing into a _mythical_
expression for that universal character of Rhadamanthian avenger or
vindicator. So of Captain Rock, in Ireland. So of Elias amongst the Jews
(_when Elias shall come_), as the sublime, mysterious, and in some
degree pathetic expression for a great teacher lurking amongst the
dreadful mists.

_VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE--THE POLITICS OF THE SITUATION._

You read in the Hebrew Scriptures of a man who had thirty sons, all of
whom 'rode on white asses'; the riding on white asses is a circumstance
that expresses their high rank or distinction--that all were princes. In
Syria, as in Greece and almost everywhere, white was the regal symbolic
colour.[7] And any mode of equitation, from the far inferior wealth of
ancient times, implied wealth. Mules or asses, besides that they were so
far superior a race in Syria no less than in Persia, to furnish a
favourite designation for a warlike hero, could much more conveniently
be used on the wretched roads, as yet found everywhere, until the Romans
began to treat road-making as a regular business of military pioneering.
In this case, therefore, there were thirty sons of one man, and all
provided with princely establishments. Consequently, to have thirty s