pondence in the style of building among the most diverse races, and in forms so simple as the pyramids, either of Egypt or Mexico, we can detect nothing more than the most ready shape which building materials assume. Even a child supplied with his miniature toy bricks, builds pyramids in which the fanciful theorists might detect the models of Babylonian or Mexican towers.

Whether we look to sacred or profane history, scarcely any relic of the former site of human habitations, royal palaces, and pagan temples, can equal in interest the ruins of ancient Babylon. Leaving those early sacred narrations of its founder, and of its first disastrous interruption, during the building of the tower of Babel, we turn to the earliest accounts of classic historians. The exact, or probable date of its foundation, which has been frequent subject of discussion, is now, more than ever, likely to excite renewed interest. The period usually assigned to it is about two hundred years after the deluge; but biblical critics are now generally agreed that the system of chronological interpretation which has been hitherto applied to the arrangement of sacred history is no longer tenable. It is generally held that a much longer period must have intervened between the period of the deluge and the birth of our Saviour, from whence we date the new era of the world's history, than that assigned by Archbishop Usher, and usually attached to our English Bibles. This consideration throws the most lively interest upon the investigation of Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities, and make the researches of Major Rawlinson, Dr. Layard, and other archæologists and travellers, into the inscribed records of the Nimroud marbles and cylinders, assume a most important character.

We have already referred to the remarkable and interesting discovery of a bilingual inscription on a vase preserved in the treasury of St. Mark, at Venice; and which may in some sense be regarded as bearing a correspond

ing place in the history of Assyrian researches, to that which the more celebrated Rosetta Stone does in relation to Egyptian hierography. This most interesting relic belongs to the period of Artaxerxes, the first, as is presumed, who ascended the throne 465 years before Christ. Another example similar to this had been previously noted. It is on an alabaster vase preserved in the Cabinet du Roi, at Paris, and was first depicted by Count Caylus, but not very accurately, in his work on Antiquities. It attracted the attention of the celebrated Champollion, who deciphered correctly the Hieroglyphics, which he read Kh-sch-ea-r-scha, or Xerxes. The addition of the word or title Erpr, now believed to signify great, he interpreted to read Irina, and supposed it to mean Iranean, or Persian. In 1844, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the celebrated Egyptian traveller, sent home from Venice a rubbing, or fac-simile impression, of the inscription on the vase of St. Mark, which those who are curious in such matters will find engraved on the thirtyfirst volume of the Archæologia, plate vi. Sir Gardner reads the Hieroglyphic name, inclosed in the Egyptian cartouche Ard-kho-scha, according to the phonetic value now assigned to the hieroglyphic characters, and he interprets the whole inscription, King Artaxerxes the Great. Immediately underneath the hieroglyphics the same is repeated in cuneiform characters, which read Ardt-kh-shscha, and the whole of which Major Rawlinson satisfactorily shows may be held to bear a similar significance in the dialect of the ancient kingdom of Persia.

How remarkable is this discovery, and how full not only of interest but of richest promise for the future! For if the Birs Nimroud be indeed the ruins of the tower of Babel, we have in its inscribed bricks, records nearly coeval with the patriarchs of the deluge, from whence we may yet be able to deduce the lost annals of the race, and the age of the world According to Herodotus, the

building of the great capital of the Babylonian empire was the work of several successive sovereigns, among whom he particularly distinguishes the two Queens, Semiramis and Nitocris. Semiramis, who succeeded to the throne on the death of her husband Ninus, the Assyrian king and conqueror of Babylon, selected it for her chosen residence. According to Diodorus, she enclosed it with immense brick walls of great height and thickness, extending the city over both banks of the Euphrates, and uniting them by means both of a tunnel and a bridge; and to her the latter historian ascribes the erection of a lofty temple to the honour of the god Belus. When contrasted with these records of the world's first empires, how mean and insignificant do the relics of our most ancient cities and kingdoms appear. We speak of the 15th century as of a remote era, and regard the 10th and 11th centuries as separated from us by a dark and broad gulph of time. But how modern do such dates appear when we remember that the era of Semiramis is believed to have been about 2000 years prior to the commencement of our era, or nearly as many thousands of years remote from our own day, as mere centuries intervene between us and the English Tudors, and the memorable historic incidents of their times.

The history of Babylon, in the period succeeding the reign of Semiramis, is almost a total blank. It is not a vain hope, however, to think that it may not always remain so. Much has already been done for the recovery of Egyptian chronology. The historic data of the great empire of Africa, are being restored and arranged so as to fill up many important lacunæ which were deemed irrecoverable blanks. But the same sculptures and paintings of Egypt, which furnish so many details for the completion of the historical narrative based on the chronological data supplied by the hierogliphics and tabular series of royal cartouches, also furnish no less

interesting allusions to contemporary nations. Here therefore is one source of important and trustworthy information; while it encourages us to pursue the more direct search for corresponding native annals, amid the ruined heaps that lie piled along the margin of the Euphrates, these strange but striking memorials of the truth of prophecy, and the inevitable accomplishment of God's righteous judgments.

Perhaps no city of all the ancient world ever presented an aspect more calculated to tempt its citizens to apply to it the title since conferred on the capital of the old Roman empire, as the Eternal City. According to the statements of ancient historians, its walls measured about sixty Roman miles in their whole extent around the vast metropolis of Babylonian empire. The accuracy of statements involving belief in the existence of a single city of such enormous extent, have been frequently challenged; but all discussion leads to the conclusion that though they may perhaps be chargeable with some degree of exaggeration or error, there can be no question that ancient Babylon covered an extent of ground such as we can form little conception of, when judging in accordance with modern customs.

The ancient eastern cities included not only pleasure grounds and hanging gardens, but even cultivated fields. The chief dangers apprehended by the occupants of a besieged city were the privations and famine consequent on a protracted siege, and one of the provisions against such dangers was the enclosure of fields within the protected area. Herodotus states the circumference of the wall as 480 stadia; a mistake, as some writers have thought for 380 stadia; and Major Rennel estimating the stadium at 491 feet, computes the extent of the wall at 34 miles. The height and breadth of the walls have equally been subjects of dispute, this, however, all historic evidence concurs in proving, that they were of such

enormous strength and massive solidity, that we can well conceive the haughty Babylonian monarch smiling in derision at the threat of their destruction, and deeming the thought of that vast peopled capital becoming what it has so long been, desert heaps of formless rubbish, a thing as impossible as that the everlasting hills should decay and be scattered into dust by the summer breezes. Yet the doom had gone forth while the rulers of Babylon were still in the plenitude of their power, and the mighty capital seemed to bid defiance to destruction or decay. Dr. Keith thus forcibly depicts the contrast of its glory, and the fulfilment of the words of divinely inspired prophets, which laid it in the dust: "Its walls, which were reckoned among the wonders of the world, appeared rather like the bulwarks of nature than the workmanship of man. The temple of Belus, half a mile in circumference and a furlong in height—the hanging gardens, which, piled in successive terraces, towered as high as the walls-the embankments which restrained the Euphrates-the hundred brazen gates-and the adjoining artificial lake-all displayed many of the mightiest works of mortals concentrated in a single point. Yet, while in the plenitude of its power, and, according to the most accurate chronologers, 160 years before the foot of an enemy had entered it, the voice of prophecy pronounced the doom of the mighty and unconquered Babylon. A succession of ages brought it gradually to the dust; and the gradation of its fall is marked till it sunk at last into utter desolation. At a time when nothing but magnificence was around Babylon the great, fallen Babylon was delineated exactly as every traveller now describes its ruins ; and the prophecies concerning it may be viewed connectedly from the period of their earliest to that of their latest fulfilment."

Babylon was, indeed, once "the glory of kingdoms," and around it lay the most fertile districts, the garden of