Yet alas! the mountain falleth and is swallowed up,
The rock is removed out of its place,
The waters hollow out the stones,
The floods overflow the dust of the earth,
And thus, thou destroyest the hope of man.

Thou contendest with him, till he faileth,
Thou changest his countenance, and sendeth him away. 
Though his sons become great and happy,
Yet he knoweth it not;
If they come to shame and dishonor,
He perceiveth it not.

Note.—­Compare with the translation of the same as given in the ordinary version of the Bible.  Job xiv.

XV.  A POLITICAL PAUSE. (102)

Charles James Fox, 1749-1806, a famous English orator and statesman, was the son of Hon. Henry Fox, afterward Lord Holland; he was also a lineal descendant of Charles ii. of England and of Henry iv, of France.  He received his education at Westminster, Eton, and Oxford, but left the University without graduating.  He was first elected to Parliament before he was twenty years old.  During the American Revolution, he favored the colonies; later, he was a friend and fellow-partisan both with Burke and Wilberforce.  Burke said of him, “He is the most brilliant and successful debater the world ever saw.”  In his later years, Mr. Fox was as remarkable for carelessness in dress and personal appearance, as he had been for the opposite in his youth.  He possessed many pleasing traits of character, but his morals were not commendable; he was a gambler and a spendthrift.  Yet he exercised a powerful influence on the politics of his times.  This extract is from a speech delivered during a truce in the long war between England and France. ###

“But we must pause,” says the honorable gentleman.  What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out, her best blood spilt, her treasures wasted, that you may make an experiment?  Put yourselves—­Oh! that you would put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors you excite.  In former wars, a man might at least have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance in his mind the impressions which a scene of carnage and death must inflict.

But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting—­“Fighting!”, would be the answer; “they are not fighting; they are pausing.”  “Why is that man expiring?  Why is that other writhing with agony?  What means this implacable fury?” The answer must be, “You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself,—­they are not fighting,—­do not disturb them,—­they are merely pausing!  This man is not expiring with agony,—­that man is not dead,—­he is only pausing!  Bless you, sir, they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause.  All that you see is nothing like fighting,—­there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it; it is nothing more than a political pause.  It is merely to try an experiment—­to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and, in the meantime, we have agreed to a pause, in pure friendship!”