from the admiration of the crowd, and which ventured to disobey rather
than forfeit self-respect and womanly pride--preferring to lose his love
rather than expose his honour. An immutable decree--his own--separated
him from one lately so beloved, and so truly worthy of high honour.

The darkened and saddened aspect of the monarch declared his late
repentance; and those who had precipitated the fall of the queen, to
screen themselves, were prompt to devise methods of banishing the
remembrance of the divorced Vashti. They would replace her by a new
favourite. Yet, so surpassing was her loveliness, and so rare her
beauty, that the courtiers could with difficulty find one whose charms
might banish from memory the repudiated consort, until they sought
through all the provinces of that vast empire for the fairest of the
daughters of men.

Hadassah, a daughter of Israel, a descendant of Benjamin, of the house
of Kish, the family of Saul, first king of Israel, won the monarch's
favour, and was promoted to the place of the disobedient but high-minded
Vashti. Esther was an orphan, but she had been carefully guarded and
instructed by her kinsman Mordecai; and while we are told that the
maiden was exceeding fair, we may believe that her beauty was of a high
order, stamped too by intellect and feeling, and that the soul which
often sustained and impelled her in her trying exigencies, breathed
through her features and animated her form. Yet Ahasuerus merely bowed
to the fair shrine. He sought not to awaken the response of the soul
that dwelt within.

When the daughter of Israel was placed upon the throne of Persia, and
another royal feast proclaimed the triumph of Esther and the happiness
of Ahasuerus, the king displayed his royal magnificence by the bestowal