THE SEVENTH PLAGUE.

AFTER Six awful manifestations of the Divine anger at the obstinacy of Pharaoh, who still refused to let the people of Israel quit his dominions, God visited him with a plague still severer than any that had yet fallen upon the land of Egypt. At the command of the Almighty, "Moses stretched forth his rod towards Heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground, and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt, since it became a nation." Moses and Aaron appear on the roof of a low house overlooking the river, that here forms an estuary, round the shore of which the imperial city exhibits its magnificent array of gorgeous palaces, temples, and stately edifices. The lightning pours over the river a volume of liquid fire, which scatters destruction and terror before it. The Nile is swollen, and its waves are lashed into formidable commotion by the tempest, awakened at the Divine command by the rod of Moses. Behind the city, the pyramids uplift their huge masses amid the portentous raging of the ele ments which scatter their terrors harmlessly over them. The multitudes running hither and thither show the consternation under which they are labouring. The hail," and fire mingled with the hail," was an event unknown in the mild climate of Egypt, which is but seldom visited with rain, and then it falls only in light showers, so that the terror of Pharaoh and his subjects was great in proportion to the singularity of this awful visitation. The most extraordinary part of the miracle was that this plague was felt throughout the whole territory of the Egyptian king, except only the land of Goshen, spreading devastation and death through a country extending to the length of nearly six hundred miles.

THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

THE tenth and last judgment upon Pharaoh and his people was the death of the first-born of every family throughout Egypt, save the families of the Israelites in the land of Goshen. The obdurate king having hitherto defied the judgments of the living God, a punishment, as signal as it was terrible, fell upon him. At midnight, when everything was prepared for the departure of the seed of Jacob from the scene of their captivity-for they no longer enjoyed that freedom which Joseph had secured to their forefathersthe divine fiat went forth for the bereavement of every Egyptian parent. "And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead."* Who shall attempt to represent the confusion and dismay of that appalling night, when parents were suddenly awoke by the dying groans of their children, upon whose tender frames the blight of the destroying angel had passed. The mother beheld her infant, and the matron her adult son struck dead before them by an omnipotent doom. The picture represents a magnificent hall of the palace where the heir and hope of Egypt is laid out for embalming. The king stands over the unconscious corpse of his son in an attitude of distracted grief. The other members of the royal family are mourning around him. The mother has thrown herself upon the body in a paroxysm of woe. The splendour around appears in melancholy contrast with the sad scene. Towards the entrance of the gorgeous edifice are two functionaries announcing to the anxious multitude the affliction which has overtaken their sovereign and their country.