This is one of the most beautiful examples of the figure in the sacred writings, and has no equal in the uninspired poets. His personification of Jerusalem is eminently lofty and impressive (chap. lii. 1,9):

"Awake, awake, be clothed with thy strength, O Zion; Clothe thyself with thy glorious garments,

O Jerusalem, thou holy city!

For no more shall enter into thee
The uncircumcised and polluted."

"Burst forth into joy, shout together,
Ye ruins of Jerusalem!

For Jehovah hath comforted his people;
He hath redeemed Israel!"

In all these examples, the objects personified are addressed. There are others in which the affections and actions of intelligent beings are ascribed to them. Thus, in the apostrophe to the king of Babylon (Isaiah xiv. 7, 8):

"The whole earth is at rest; is quiet;

They burst forth into singing;

Even the fir-trees rejoice with respect to thee,

The cedars of Lebanon, saying

Now that thou art lain down,

The feller shall not come up against us."

This is not a metaphor, as it is a law of that figure

that the agents or objects to which it is applied, are capable of acts or appearances that are, in some relation, like those which it ascribes to them. But firs and cedars are not competent to anything analogous to the acts they are here exhibited as exerting. They may present an appearance of beauty and cheerfulness that resembles the human countenance when exhilarated with joy, but they are not capable of any appearance or movement that answers in any degree to an address to an intelligent being in the realms of the dead.

It is employed again in the following verse:

"Hades from beneath is excited, because of thee,

To meet thee at thy coming.

It rouses for thee the mighty dead,

All the chief ones of the earth.

It raises from their thrones all the kings of the nations.”

Hades, the world of the dead, is not capable of acts and conditions that correspond in any manner to those which are here affirmed of it. It is addressed as though it were an intelligent agent, and the keeper of the dead; and it is in that character that they are ascribed to it.

The figure is thus one of the most lofty and beautiful that the fancy employs, and invests the events it is used to exemplify and adorn with extraordinary

dignity and splendor. To exhibit them as of such significance that the great objects of the material world should be roused to consciousness at their presence, and touched with joy or sorrow, and burst into songs or lamentations at their occurrence, is to exalt and aggrandize them in the highest degree of which the imagination is capable.

An elliptical metaphor, by which a city or country is exhibited as a person, and the affections, acts, and conditions of a person ascribed to it, is sometimes treated by writers as a personification. As Lam. i. 7, 8:

"Jerusalem remembered, in the days of her affliction and of her miseries, all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her Sabbaths. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed; all that honored her despise her; because they have seen her nakedness; yea, she sigheth and turneth backward."

The city is not here addressed as a material structure, as it would have been had it been personified; but is used first by metonymy for its population, and is in that relation spoken of by an elliptical metaphor, as though a real woman.

Sometimes an elliptical metaphor, by which the population of a city or country are exhibited as an

individual, is mistaken for a personification. As Lam. iv. 21, 22:

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Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee; thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked. The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion: he will no more carry thee away into captivity; he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom, he will discover thy sins."

This is not a personification, as persons cannot be personified, but is a substitution of an individual for a people; and is, like the other, a metaphor, with an ellipsis of the affirmation, by which, had it received the regular form of the figure, the people would have been declared to be a woman.

In many instances, abstract things, such as ignorance and knowledge; characteristics, such as truth, wisdom, virtue, patience, faith; seasons, as evening, morning, day, spring, winter, and others of the kind, are personified by the ascription to them of acts that are peculiar to persons. Thus Wisdom is personified by Solomon:

"Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars; she hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table; she

hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither; as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mingled. Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding" (chap. ix. 1–6).

Wisdom is as clearly personified by the ascription to her of these acts, which are peculiar to human beings, as she would have been had she been directly addressed and solicited to build her house, prepare her feast, and invite her guests. They are not ascribed to her by a metaphor, inasmuch as she is not an agent, and never exercises acts of any kind, nor produces effects that resemble the actions here affirmed of her. The acts, instead of metaphorical, are proper to her considered as a person, and are, in fact, used, by a hypocatastasis, for the analogous acts of providing the gifts of knowledge for men, and alluring them freely to accept them. Knowledge is, in like manner, personified by Gray in the following lines:

"But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll."

To unroll a volume, rich with the spoils of time, to the eyes of men, is an act appropriate only to an