THE DEATH OF EZEKIEL'S WIFE.

"SON of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. So I spake unto the people in the morning and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded *." The prophet here describes how, during the prophetic afflatus, it had been revealed to him that his wife should shortly die. This mournful event took place in the evening, and on the following morning Ezekiel declared to the people the injunctions which the Almighty had laid upon him not to mourn for the deceased by shaving his head and putting on sackcloth, as was the usual custom; thereby signifying that the calamities about to fall upon the Jews should be so astonishing as to be beyond all expressions of sorrow. In the former part of the chapter, Ezekiel symbolizes the destruction of Jerusalem and its inhabitants by the figure of a boiling pot in which the scum has been suffered to remain; and in order to give a more solemn aspect to the prophecy, which the Jews did not appear to regard, he mentions his own severe domestic affliction, and the command which the Deity had laid upon him not to mourn for his wife, when he would so soon have much more serious cause for lamentation. He tells his infatuated countrymen that such will be their grief upon the coming visitation, that, like him, "they shall neither mourn nor weep," for the divine judgments will strike them with such astonishment, and overwhelm them with such terrors, that they shall neither be able to express it by words nor actions which eventually came to pass. The print represents Ezekiel standing by the couch of his deceased wife, and relating to some of the most influential persons among his countrymen the prohibition which he had received from God, and what it portended.

THE DESTRUCTION OF TYRE.

"THUS saith the Lord God to Tyrus: Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, when the wounded cry, when the slaughter is made in the midst of them? Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put off their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with trembling; they shall sit upon the ground, and shall tremble at every moment, and be astonished at thee." In this chapter the prophet foretells the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, who took it after a siege of thirteen years, in the thirty-second year of his reign. This siege forced the inhabitants upon a rocky island in the immediate neighbourhood, about half a mile from the main land. Here they built another city, afterwards called new Tyre, which in process of time became a place of immense wealth. Old Tyre was built by a company of Zidonians, and Isaiah therefore calls it the daughter of Zidon. It was situated upon a considerable eminence on the continent, and bore originally the name of Paletyrus. As there are some expressions in Ezekiel's prophecy which are admitted by Dr. Prideaux, in his "Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament," to be applicable only to the destruction of the new city of Tyre by Alexander the Great, the artist has attempted to represent the latter celebrated siege in the accompanying illustration. It was with the greatest difficulty that this mighty conqueror was able to obtain possession of this wealthy capital. The siege was continued for seven months with the most determined perseverance on the part of the Macedonians, and was as obstinately protracted by the spirited efforts of the Tyrians. The city was at length carried by Alexander's troops constructing through the sea, with incredible labour, a causeway from the continent to the island on which the city stood, a distance of four furlongs. In storming this celebrated capital, the carnage was prodigious: eight thousand of the inhabitants were slain, two thousand crucified, and thirty thousand sold as slaves. The wealth which fell to the conqueror was immense.