See Genesis vii.

WHAT a thrilling and terrifying scene is here placed before us--showing perhaps the last place of refuge from the rising water of the Flood which, as the Bible records, overwhelmed the world, because of the wickedness of the people, and engulfed and destroyed all living, all breathing things-the tender infant, the blooming youth, fathers, mothers, grandsires-all save the righteous family of Noah in the Ark, and the beasts and birds and creeping things he was commanded by God to save by sevens and by pairs to again replenish the earth. The people had gone on in their wickedness, and as the torrents descended ceaselessly and the gathering waters began to swell around their homes, doubtless they withdrew slowly from the valleys and pleasant fields, regretfully gazing behind, and perhaps wondering how much would be spared of their habitations, of their crops of grain and their vineyards; but the flood followed them on, rapidly driving them from slope to slope, and what terror and anguish must have seized upon them as, in its swift pursuit, numbers of them began to be swept away or swallowed up, and they came to see that the hills were surely sinking under their feet. How they must have watched with straining eyes from lofty peaks the waters raging beneath, or listened to their roar and fury, with hearts subdued by fear, in the darkness of the night. And when finally, looking higher and higher for safety, they are driven to the giddy crags of the mountains, who can picture their despair What cries and groans and bitter wailings must have left their lips! What piercing shrieks have rent the air, as fathers or mothers were torn from their little ones!

In the picture before us the artist has strikingly depicted the wildness and horror of the scene. We see the waters surging in hollow waves, till their foreboding blackness mingles with a sky heavy and dark and pitiless as they the remorseless powers of nature unrestrained. In the foreground a single rock still meets the tempest's shock, and around it have gathered, or have been swept the few survivors of the perishing host. A tigress has gathered her young about her, and almost at her feet cluster the babes of the hapless pair who are perishing in the flood below, their last feeble strength being given to place their little ones beyond the reach of the breakers. The infant stretches out his hand imploringly towards its mother, but she has sunk unconscious upon the father's breast.