army was suddenly assaulted by the Medes in a time of festivity, when unable to resist the enemy. A great part of them were destroyed; and the river, having increased to an unexampled height by rains, broke down a great extent of the wall, opened an entrance for the enemy, and overflowed the lower part of the city. The king, in his desperation, and deeming the prediction was accomplished, heaped an immense funeral pile, and having set fire to it, and to the palace, was consumed with his household and his wealth; and the Medes carried away many talents of silver and gold to Ecbatana. "While they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. With an overflowing flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof. The gates of the rivers shall be opened. Nineveh is of old, like a pool of water. The gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire shall devour thy bars. Fortify thy strongholds-there shall the fire devour thee; take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; for there is none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture," Nahum i. 8. 10; ii. 6, 8, 9; iii. 13–15.

The utter destruction and perpetual desolation of Nineveh were foretold. "The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof. Affliction shall not rise up the second time. The merchants of Nineveh, who were multiplied above the stars of heaven, and even her crowned, who were as locusts and great caterpillars, they flee away, and their place is not known where they were. He will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness," Nahum i. 8, 9; iii. 16, 17; Zephaniah ii. 13-15. The very site of Nineveh was long unknown. It has, of late, been visited by different travellers. It is now an extended waste, interspersed sparingly with heaps of rubbish. The principal mounds are few in number; in many places overgrown with grass. The appearance of other mounds and ruins, less marked, extend for ten miles, but there is not one monument of royalty, nor one token of splendor; the place is not known where they were. There are not even materials of buildings discernible in the principal mounds. The very ruins have perished; it is less than the wreck of what it was.

BABYLON.

BABYLON rivalled Nineveh in its greatness and wickedness. And now the ruins of these once hostile cities, which vied with each other, and both of which oppressed and led captive, the one the Israelites, the other the Jews, show that each of them has borne its predicted "burden," and that the vision which the prophets of Israel saw respecting them is true. The accounts are now as ample, and the witnesses as numerous, of its present desolation, as of its ancient greatness.

Several of the best Greek and Roman writers describe the ancient greatness of Babylon at different periods. All agree in re

lating its wonderful magnificence. Herodotus, who lived about 250 years after Isaiah, wrote from what he saw and examined. The walls of Babylon, before their height was reduced to 75 feet by Darius Hystaspes, were above 300 feet high; they were 75 feet broad, and 34 miles in compass. The temple of Belus, 630 feet in height; the artificial hanging gardens, piled in successive terraces as high as the walls, the embankments which restrained the Euphrates, the hundred brazen gates, the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar, eight miles in compass; and the artificial lake, the circumference of which was far more than a hundred miles, and its depth, by the lowest account, 35 feet-all displayed many of the mightiest works of mortals concentrated in a single spot. The great Babylon was the glory of kingdoms, and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, the golden city, the lady of kingdoms, and the praise of the whole earth. The Scriptures, which thus describe it, mark minutely every stage of its fall, till it should become what it now is a complete desolation.

Concerning the siege of Babylon, Herodotus and Xenophon relate, in exact accordance with what Isaiah and Jeremiah had foretold, that the Medes and Persians, united under Cyrus, prophesied of by Isaiah, above 100 years before he was born, came against Babylon and besieged it; that the Babylonians, enclosed within their walls, remained in their holds and forebore to fight; that Cyrus turned the waters of the Euphrates, which flowed through the city, into the lake, whereby a snare was laid for Babylon; that the waters of the river, being thus lowered so as to allow men to go over, the enemy entered by its channel; that, from the negligence of the guards, the gates, leading from the river to the city, were not shut; that the Median and Persian army thus entering, as if by stealth, designedly during the night of an annual Babylonish festival, Babylon was taken when it was not aware; that its princes, captains, and mighty men, reposing after their feasts, and drunken, were suddenly slaughtered; and that Babylon, which had never been conquered before, was thus taken without resistance in a moment, unknown to the king and the inhabitants, who were not aware of their danger, till one messenger ran to meet another, with the tidings that Babylon was taken, Isaiah xxi. 2; xlv. 27; xliv. 1; Jer. 1. 38; li. 11, 27, 30, 36, 57.

The gradual decline of Babylon is also traced in the prophecies, Isaiah xlvii. 1. Babylon ceased to be the seat of government; it rebelled against Darius, was taken by him, and farther humbled, Jeremiah li. 44, 47, 52. Xerxes-seized the sacred treasures, and plundered or destroyed the temples and idols of Babylon, Jer. li. 8, 9. Alexander the Great attempted to restore Babylon to its former glory. But his death, when in the prime of life, put an end to the work: she was not healed, Jer. li. 9. About 130 years before the Christian era, a Parthian conqueror destroyed the fairest parts of Babylon; and many of the inhabitants were removed into Media. The neighboring city of Seleucia also drained it of a great part of its population.

After the commencement of the Christian era, Babylon became gradually more and more desolate, till, in the fourth century, its walls formed an enclosure for wild beasts, and the site where the golden city had stood, which reigned over the nations, was converted into a hunting-place for the Persian monarchs. A long interval succeeded without any record concerning it, and the progress of ages has brought it at last to that utter desolation which the prophets testified that it would finally become.

The ruins of Babylon, the site or situation of which has been completely ascertained, have been visited and described of late, by several British travellers. There is some diversity of opinion as to what particular palace, or edifice, of ancient Babylon, is now a particular mound or heap, but the greatness of the desolation admits no dispute. For, from being the "glory of kingdoms," Babylon is now the greatest of ruins; and, after 2,400 years, it exhibits the precise scene defined in prophecy; and it could not now be described in more appropriate terms than the following:"The name and remnant are cut off from Babylon. There the Arabian pitches not his tent; there the shepherds make not their folds; but wild beasts of the desert lie there, and their houses are full of doleful creatures, &c. It is a possession for the bittern, and a dwelling-place for dragons, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert, a burnt mountain, empty, wholly desolate, pools of water, heaps, and utterly destroyed, a land where no man dwelleth, every one that goeth by it is astonished," &c., Isa. xiii. 19, &c.; xiv. 22, &c.; Jer. l. 13, 23, 39, &c.; li. 13, 26, &c. Dread of evil spirits, and terror at the wild beasts among the ruins of Babylon, restrain the Arab from pitching his tent, and shepherds from making their folds there. The princely palaces and habitations of Babylon are now nothing but unshapely heaps of bricks and rubbish; along the sides, or on the summits of which, are now caverns, where porcupines creep, and owls and bats nestle; where "lions" find a den, and "jackals, hyenas, and other noxious animals, an unmolested retreat:" from which "issues a loathsome smell;" and "the entrances to which are strewed with the bones of sheep and goats." Though utterly destroyed, “their houses are full of doleful creatures, and owls dwell there, and satyrs dance there. The wild beasts lie there, and cry in their desolate houses, It shall no more be inhabited for ever," &c. On the one side of the Euphrates, the canals being dry, and the crumbled bricks on an elevated surface exposed to the scorching sun, these "sun-burnt ruins" cover an "arid plain," and Babylon is a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. On the other, the embankments of the river, and with them the vestiges of ruins over a large space, have been swept away; the plain is, in general, "marshy, and in many places inaccessible," especially after the annual overflowing of the Euphrates; "no son of man doth pass thereby ; the sea, or river, is come unto Babylon; she is covered with the multitudes of the waves thereof." At that season, also, large deposites of the waters are left stagnant between the ruins, verifying the threat, "I will make thee a possession for