And it was trade and commerce which procured to the Babylonians their wealth and influence, although agriculture was not neglected. Their caravans, of whose camel drivers, by the way, no very flattering account is given [a Kidd. iv.], carried the rich carpets and woven stuffs of the East, as well as its precious spices, to the West: generally through Palestine to the Phoenician harbours, where a fleet of merchantmen belonging to Jewish bankers and shippers lay ready to convey them to every quarter of the world. These merchant princes were keenly alive to all that

passed, not only in the financial, but in the political world. We know that they were in possession of State secrets, and entrusted with the intricacies of diplomacy. Yet, whatever its condition, this Eastern Jewish community was intensely Hebrew. Only eight days' journey, though, according to Philo's western ideas of it, by a difficult road [1 Philo ad Cajum, ed. Frcf. p. 1023.], separated them from Palestine; and every pulsation there vibrated in Babylonia. It was in the most outlying part of that colony, in the wide plains of Arabia, that Saul of Tarsus spent those three years of silent thought and unknown labour, which preceded his re-appearance in Jerusalem, when from the burning longing to labour among his brethren, kindled by long residence among these Hebrews of the Hebrews, he was directed to that strange work which was his life's mission, [b Gal. i. 17;] And it was among the same community that Peter wrote and laboured, [c 1 Pet. v. 13.] amidst discouragements of which we can form some conception from the sad boast of Nehardaa, that up to the end of the third century it had not numbered among its members any convert to Christianity. [2 Pes. 56 a, apud Neubauer, u. s., p. 351.] In what has been said, no notice has been taken of those wanderers of the ten tribes, whose trackless footsteps seem as mysterious as their after-fate. The Talmudists name four countries as their seats.