The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote.  The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm; the prettinesses heightened by consternation; the courtier’s fear which was flattery, and the lady’s which was affectation; all that we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted surprise of their sovereign; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus.  Just this sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone off!

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the preservation of their persons,—­such as we have witnessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given—­an adequate exponent of a supernatural terror? the way in which the finger of God, writing judgments, would have been met by the withered conscience?  There is a human fear, and a divine fear.  The one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape.  The other is bowed down, effortless, passive.  When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants?  But let us see in the text what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consternation.

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.  The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the king’s concubines, and his wives.  Then follows—­

“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.  Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against another.”

This is the plain text.  By no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled.  Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband.  The lords are simply said to be astonished; i.e. at the trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign.  Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw.  He recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt.  “Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was written.”  He speaks of the phantasm as past.