2

terreftrial deity, is a heap of rubbish; no longer diftinguifhed by an air of fuperior elegance, but by more melancholy marks of departed dignity*. Where the nobles of that fumptuous court trailed along the marble pavements their robes of purple and embroidery, there the crefted fnake hiffes, or the fierce envenomed adder glides.

How changed is the hofpitable hall, and how difgraced the room of ftate! The firft afforded a conftant and cordial reception to the welcome guests;-in the last, the great king gave audience to his cringing, his adoring vaffals. Now thorns over-run the circumference, and defolation fits in the threshold of them both. Where are the roofs of ivory, painted with vermilion, and adorned with fculpture? the radiant roofs, whofe lamps of burnished filver, pendent in many a blazing row, yielded light as from another fky? Swept from their foundations, they lie clotted with defiling dirt, or clafped with tangling briars. Mufic no longer pours her harmony, thro' the fpacious and extended apartment; but the night-owl, neftling in fome cleft of the ruins, fcreams her harsh and portentous diffonance. Joy no longer leads up the fprightly dance, amidst the luftre of that artificial day; but the folitary bat flies in filent circles, or flaps her footy wings. All thofe gay delights, let the fons of fenfuality hear the tale, and take warning from the cataftrophe! all thofe gay delights are extinguished, like one of their feebleft tapers, which, having illuminated for a while the festive affembly, fhone itfelf to the edges. of the exhaufted focket, and, in a moment, flashed into ftench and darkness.

The walls, though cemented with bitument, and con

Benjamin, a Jew of Tudela, in his Itinerary, written about the year of our Lord 1170, tells us," That he was upon the place where this city formerly ftood, and found it wholly defolated and destroyed. Only fome ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace were ftill remaining; but men were afraid to go near them, by reafon of the many ferpents and fcorpions, that were then in the place.

+ The walls were built of brick, and cemented with a gluti

folidated into the firmnefs of a flint, are become like the broken bubble. There was a time, when the inhabitants, confiding in the ftrength of their bulwarks, and the multitude of their towers, looked down with fearless difdain on the army of befiegers. But now the prophet's threatening is most terribly fulfilled: The fortress of the high fort of thy walls bath he brought down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the duft, lfa. xxv. 12.— Where are the gates, the grand and glittering gatest, which admitted the triumphant hofts, or poured forth their numerous legions against the day of battle? Not one trace remains, to tell the inquifitive stranger, "Here the fpacious avenues opened; here the maffy portals rofe." Commodious walks, in which the clustering merchants raised the bufy hum, and planned the schemes of commerce; ample streets, in which industry drove the toiling car, or fmote the founding anvil; are shrouded with matted grafs, or buried beneath the rankest weeds. Silence, in both places, a fullen filence reigns; and inactivity, a death-like inactivity, flumbers.

What is become of thofe hanging-gardens, which, for curious contrivance and ftupendous workmanship, were never equalled in any nation under heaven? Terraces "that overlooked the tallest houfes! Parterres exalted to the clouds, and opening their flowery beauties in that ftrange region! Groves, whofe very roots were higher

nous kind of flime, which binds more firmly than any mortar, and foon grows harder than the bricks or ftones themfelves. Thefe fortifications were, according to the account given by Herodotus, in breadth eighty-feven feet, in height three hundred and fifty feet, and reckoned to be abfolutely impregnable: infomuch that the inhabitants, when befieged by Cyrus, infulted him from the walls, and laughed at his attempt, as a vain imprafticable projet. Οι δε εν τωτείχει κατεγέλων την πολιορκίαν. Xenoph. Inft. Cyr. lib. 7.

†There was no lefs than an hundred gates, all of folid brafs. Hence it is, that when Jehovah promifes to make Cyrus mafter of Babylon, he speaks in this very remarkable and particularizing maner, I will break in pieces before thee the gates of brafs, Ifa. xlv. 2.

than the tops of the loftieft trees! *—They are now fmitten by a dreadful blaft. Their beauty is decayed, like a withered leaf. Their very being is gone, like the chaff of the fummer threshing-floors, which the wind carrieth away, and its place is no where found, Dan. ii. 35. What was once the favourite retreat of a queen, and the admiration of the whole world, is now a neft for poisonous reptiles, and a kennel for ravenous beafts.-The traveller, inftead of expatiating with delight where this penfile paradife flourished, is ftruck with horror, keeps at a trembling distance, and, furveying the rueful fpot, cries out, "Righteous art thou, O Lord, and true are thy judgments!"

Here ftands an obelisk, maimed by the stroke of revolving years, like a mountain-oak shattered by the flaming bolt. Another, all unhinged and quite disjointed, feems to tremble before every blast that blows. There the pyramidt, firm as the folid rock, and ftable, one would have thought, as the everlasting hills, wrenched from its mighty bafe, is tumbled headlong in enormous ruin, and has crushed many a structure by its fall.-See yonder the triumphal arch, which exhibited, through its extenfive and beautiful bend, an advantageous view of the firmament. It was once the graceful memorial of fome celebrated victory; it is now converted into a trophy of a very different kind. Just retaining two uneven, battered, ragged itumps, it ferves to recognize the destructive ravages of time. Spires that pierced the clouds, and fhot into the fkies, are levelled with the trodden foil. pinnacles, to which the ftrong-winged bird could hardly foar, the grovelling worm crawls, and the fordid foail leaves her flimy track. Baths, that contained the tranf

On

"Penfiles horti funt, fummam murorum altitudinem æquantes, multarumque arborum umbra et proceritate amœni." Curt. lib. 5.

+ Strabo calls the temple of Belus a pyramid, lib. 15. But if the critics in hiftory fhould question or deny the existence of pyramids among the Babylonians, for this and other libertics ufed by cur young declaimer, Horace fhall make an apology:

Pictoribus atque poctis

Quidlibet audendi femper fuit æqua poteftas."

lucent wave, and were fo often perfumed with oderiferous unguents, are choaked with filth; the grand colonnade that surrounded them, is fhivered to pieces, and the elevated dome that covered them, is dashed to the ground. The public aqueducts, which conveyed cleanlinefs and health along their cryftal currents, are degenerated into a ftagnating lake; while croaking vermine fwarm among the weeds, and noisome exhalations fteam from the mire. August and stately temples; that feemed to affect the neighbourhood of heaven*, are funk to the very duft.Who can point the fpot where the confecrated victim bled, or the facred fire glowed? where the fceptred! image lifted its majestic head, or the venerating crouds bowed the fuppliant knee †? Degraded are thofe fplendid vanities, and caft (according to the denunciation of the facred oracles) to the bats and to the moles, Ifa. ii. 20. All is low; low as the fpurious dignity of the idols they compliment: low as the fraw that is trodden down for the dunghill, Ifa. xxv. 10.

Sepulchres, the once venerable repofitories of the dead, awful manfions, deftined to everlafting concealment, are cleft and rent asunder. They disclose the horrid fecrets of the pit, and frightfully yawn upon the blafted day. Poffibly fome ravenous creature lurks within, that has already rifled the tomb of its hero, given the putrid bones a new grave, and waits only for the approach of night to

A tower in the temple of Belus, and dedicated to his worfhip, was most amazingly high. It confifted of eight piles of building erected one above another. It arofe to the elevation of fix hundred feet perpendicular, and is thought, by the learned Bochart, to have been part of that fuperb work which was begun when the whole earth was of one language; but mifcarried, or rather was providentially defeated, by the confusion of tongues. In this ftructure, there were doubtless very strong traces of that arrogant boaft, Let us build us a city and a tower, whofe top may reach to heaven, Gen. xi. 4.

Alluding to that prodigious instance of profufeness, oftentation, and idolatrous madness, the golden image fet up in the plain of Dura, whofe beight (that is, the height of the flatue and pedestal taken together) was threefore cubits, Dan. iii. 1. Connection, vol. 1. p. 95. &c. p. 567, &c.

E e z

See Prideaux's

repeat his funeral dirge in yells. Infcriptions, defigned to perpetuate fome illuftrious character, or eternize fome heroic deed, are blended in the promifcuous mafs. In vain would the prying antiquary search for a legible or confiftent fentence; in vain attempt to find the memorable names of a Nebuchadnezzar or a Nimrod. Thefe, though engraven on plates of brafs, or cut in blocks of marble, are loft amidst the stupendous lumber, as prints on the unsteady fand are effaced, when returning tides fmooth the furrowed beach.

Here and there a ftraggling cyprefs rifes, as it were, with funeral folemnity amidit the waste *. Somewhat like the black plumes, nodding over the mournful hearse, they augment the fadness of the scene, and throw a deeper horror on all below. No human voice is heard, nor human face feen, amidst these defolated heaps: Too dreary, even for the roam of hoary hermit, or the cell of gloomy monk. Abandoned they are, totally abandoned, to the dominion of folitude; or else to the unmolested resort of shaggy monsters and feathered hags, which fun the midnight hours; thefe with their importunate fhrieks; thofe with their execrable howis.

See! to what a defpicable, what an abhorred state, the proudest monuments of earthly grandeur, and the moft coftly apparatus for earthly felicity, may be reduced! A pregnant and alarming proof, that, for lafting honour, or real happiness,

"They build too low, who build beneath the skies."

Afp. I very much approve the choice of your fubject. The ruins of Perfepolis would have given us a view of magnificence in abafement. The ruins of Palmyra might have fhewed us elegance in the duft. But the ruins of Babylon difplay, at once, magnificence and elegance under an eclipfe, fcripture and revelation in their glory.—

* Rauwolf, a German traveller, who paffed that way in the year of our Lord 1574, fays, " This country is fo dry and barren, that it cannot be tilled, and fo bare, that I should have doubted whether the potent Babylon did ftand there, if I had not known it by feveral ancient and delicate antiquities that are fill ftanding hereabout in great defolation."