were two rows of bricks cemented with plaster; over these again were laid thick sheets of lead, and lastly, the garden mould, which was of depth sufficient to sustain the loftiest trees; and the whole was planted with every variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers. While from the Euphrates, which flowed near this garden of enchantment, water was raised by an aqueduct to the upper terrace, from whence it dispersed its refreshing influence over the whole "artificial paradise.".

This immense edifice was erected by Nebuchadnezzar to gratify his Queen Amyitis, who, having spent her early life in Media, remembered with regret and delight the woody and mountainous scen ery of her native country. In the spaces between the arches upon which the structure rested, were large and magnificent apartments, from whence the eye commanded the wide plain of Shinar, and all the splendid monuments of the mighty Babylon. The excellent Prideaux closes his learned and circumstantial details of this labour of the royal Assyrian, by stigmatising it as a "monstrous work of vanity;" but it seems,

one of purer taste and truer to unvitiated feeling than we might have expected from the corrupt and profligate character of the Court.

Among the other great works of Babylon, was the celebrated temple of Belus, most remarkable for a prodigious tower which stood in the centre, and which, there seems no reason to doubt, was the same erected in the land of Shinar, and which occasioned the confusion of languages. This part of the temple consisted of eight towers, built one above the other; and, because it decreased gradually as it rose to the top, Strabo calls the whole a pyramid; and it is not only asserted, but proved, that it exceeded in height the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids. The ascent to the top was by stairs on the exterior of the building, which, turning by very slow gradations in a spiral manner round the whole edifice, gave it the appearance of eight towers rising one above the other. In these different stories were large apartments supported by pillars. The tower was crowned by an observatory, by means of which the Babylonians became more expert in the science of astronomy than all the other nations of antiquity.

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The chief use of this edifice, however, which contained a multiplicity of chapels, was for the worship of Belus or Baal, and of other false deities. The richness and splendour of the temple were such as might have been expected in the prime seat of Asiatic idolatry,

and filled with statues, tables, cups, censers, and other vessels, impiously called sacred, all of massy gold, and of immense value. Among the statues or images was one forty feet in height, which weighed a thousand Babylonish talents; and the other riches contained in the temple are said to have amounted to twenty-one millions sterling.

Till the time of Nebuchadnezzar this temple consisted in the tower alone, but he erected vast buildings on every side, so that the space it ultimately occupied exceeded, by eighteen hundred feet, the square of the holy temple at Jerusalem. In the wall which surrounded it, were several gates of solid brass; and these gates are supposed to have been formed out of the materials of the brazen sea, the brazen pillars, and

other vessels of brass, which constituted. the spoil of the victorious Assyrian, when he robbed the temple at Jerusalem. For Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred vessels of the sanctuary, and deposited them in the house of his god Bel, at Babylon. This edifice remained till the time of Xerxes, who, on his return from the invasion of Greece, laid it in ruins, after having plundered it of all its accumulated riches, among which he probably carried off the image of the then sleeping god. This statue, it is conjectured, was the same which Nebuchadnezzar dedicated on the plains of Dura to the sound of flute, harp, sackbut, and psaltery, in the days of the prophet Daniel. Other images of the idols of the Babylonians were found among the immense quantity of spoil, which had been amassed in the course of two thousand years. Alexander, on his return from India, attempted to rebuild the tower of Babel, but his death interrupted the labour, which, had he lived, would doubtless have been too much even for the son of Philip; the desecration of the Almighty having gone forth against Babylon, it was destined, and devoted to utter desolation.

The other enormous works connected with this great city, and which were of more utility than any we have yet enumerated, were the canals, lakes, and embankments on the river. The two former were excavated for the purpose of drawing off the waters of the Euphrates, when flooded by the melting of the snows on the mountains of Armenia. The latter consisted in a quay and an high wall, built of brick and bitumen, of the same thickness as the walls that went round the city. In these walls, opposite every street that led to the river, were gates of brass; and from them descents by steps to the water for the convenience of the inhabitants who passed and re-passed in boats from one part of the city, to another. These brazen gates were always open through the day, but closed at night; and it was through these gates that Cyrus led in his victorious troops, on that night when the voluptuous monarch stood trembling at the hand-writing on the wall, and felt his doom in its mystic characters.

While the works connected with the embankment of the river were in progress, the course of the Euphrates was turned into an artificial lake