422 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



see in them also the movings of a life not wholly incapable 

 of fellow feeling with man. Herder has drawn attention 

 to the sympathy which Hebrew poetry always manifests 

 towards the brute creation l a sympathy not confined 

 to the domestic animals, which the Israelites treated with 

 a consideration well brought out in the story of Balaam s 

 ass and in the law of Sabbatic rest, but extending to every 

 living thing. Nay, even inanimate objects appear as the 

 friends of man. Take for example the exquisite song in 

 which the Hebrew women as they stand round the 

 fountain, waiting their turn to draw, coax forth the water 

 which wells up all too slowly for their impatience : 



Spring up, O well ! (sing ye to it !) 



Well that the princes digged, 



The nobles of the people bored, 



With the sceptre and with their staves ! 2 



The simplicity of personal interest, the tenderness of 

 affectionate regard, with which the Hebrew maidens salute 

 the &quot; living waters &quot; that well forth, murmuring in answer 

 to their song, belongs to quite another sphere of fancy 

 from that which peopled the mountains and glades of 

 Hellas with the fair sisterhood, 



CU T &\&amp;lt;T0. K0\(t 



/cat iryycLs iroTa^Cjv KCU iriaea 



When the Greek ascribes life to the powers of nature he 

 gives to his personification a shapely human body as well 

 as a living soul, and in the same measure as his creation 

 gains in plastic grace it becomes less near to the daily 

 life of man. The nymph is no longer the fountain or the 

 tree, which man knows and loves, but a new being that 

 hides herself behind them. But to the Semite the rippling 

 water is itself alive, the oaks of Bashan wail when the fire 

 wastes their tangled forests, 3 the cedars and cypresses of 

 Lebanon rejoice in mocking songs over the fall of the 



1 Dial. iii. vol. i. p. 66. 



2 Num. xxi. 17, 18. To dig with the staff, which is the symbol of 

 authority, means to command the well to be dug. 3 Zech. xi. i, s. 



