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.