Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/142

 feeling was quiescent, for it arose from his vividly domestic, and his prædial habits and sentiments. The patriarchal ancestry of the nation had given him a tradition of quietude and enjoyment—under the vine and the fig tree—his wife as a fruitful vine and his children as olive plants round about his table; and thus he was not the turbulent brawling citizen, machinating revolution:—he was the sturdy yeoman, and the true conservative. A soldier, and always brave if there be need to fight—if there be an enemy on the border; but he was never ambitious or aggressive.

Enough has become known concerning the common arts of life, as practised among the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs, to secure for them an advanced position on the scale of material civilization: they understood, and successfully practised, as well the secondary as the primary arts which minister to the subsidiary, as well as to the more imperative requirements of the social economy. During their long sojourn in the near neighbourhood of the Egyptian civilization, the Hebrew people—slaves during the latter portion only of this period—had largely partaken of this advancement. The evidences of this culture are incidental and conclusive, as we gather them from the narrative of the forty years' wandering in the Sinaitic peninsula. The mechanic and the decorative arts were at the command of the people: there were among them skilled artificers in all lines:—they possessed also a formed