In the mean time Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, whose son Jehoram had married Athaliah, daughter of Ahab, and who was therefore in friendly social and political relations with Ahab, came to visit him.

Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, who reigned over Judah, also perished in those revolutionary times.

The dark spot in the history of Judah for nearly two hundred years was the ascendency gained by Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, over her husband Jehoram, who introduced the gods of Phoenicia.

She even succeeded in usurping the throne, and in destroying the whole race of David, with the exception of Joash, an infant, whom Jehoiada the high-priest contrived to hide until the unscrupulous Athaliah was slain, having reigned as queen six years,the first instance in Jewish history of a female sovereign.

In the reign of Jehoash, the son of Athaliah, an Assyrian monarch had exacted tribute from Tyre and Sidon, and Syria was overrun.

Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, was no whit behind her mother in atrocious wickedness.

Her policy, unlike that of Athaliah of old, was on the whole constructive.

This northern Athaliah, who has the modesty not to name her murdered husband in that light, calls him her neighbour; and, as if all the world were savages, like Russians, pretends that he died suddenly of a distemper that never was expeditious; mocks Heaven with pretensions to charity and piety; and heaps the additional inhumanity on the man she has dethroned and assassinated, of imputing his death to a judgment from Providence.

In the first, the young ladies, who were playing at chess, were ordered to sing to us the choruses of Athaliah; in another, they danced minuets and country dances, while a nun, not quite so able as St. Cecilia, played on a violin.

17, 18, 20; for, immediately after the making of his covenant, "all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and brake it downhis altars, and his images brake they in pieces thoroughly; and the priest appointed officers over the house of the Lord;" and they slew Athaliah with the sword.