en, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase."*

Never was there so overwhelming a check given to human pride; never a more impressive warning held forth to the impious and the vain; nor can language express a more affecting acknowledgment of error, or a deeper and more grateful piety, than breathes in the concluding words of the royal penitent's narrative. We envy not the feelings of the man who should attempt to weaken the force of such a lesson by seeking to explain, upon natural causes, events which arose out of a direct interposition of divine power.

During the period of the monarch's humiliation, the reins of government were held by his son, Evil Merodach, whose bad administration was severely punished by his father upon his return to reason. But the aged sovereign survived this act of justice only one year; and the manner of his death, on which sacred history has been silent, has by profane writers been described as attended with preternatural circumstances. A spirit of prophecy is said to have come upon him as his hour approached; and, ascending to the top of his palace, he foretold the destruction of his kingdom by the Medes and Persians, praying at the same time that he might not live to witness the event. While yet speaking, it is added that he, like Semiramis, was snatched away from the view of men, and was no more seen upon earth.

Evil Merodach, called Ilvarodam in Ptolemy's canon, and usually considered the Belshazzar of Daniel, who speaks of him as the son of Nebuchadnezzar,† now released from the dungeon into which the just displeasure of his father had cast him, commenced his reign by an act of mercy. He took from the prison, where he had languished thirty-seven years, Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and treated him ever afterward as a sovereign. But, while acting as regent during the visitation inflicted on his parent, he had the imprudence to provoke the anger of Astyages, king of Media, by plundering a part of his country during a great hunting-match which he held on the occasion of his marriage with Nitocris, a Median lady; and an armed body being sent out to punish the aggressors, the Prince Jeremiah, lii., 31.

* Daniel, iv., 30-37.

+ Ibid., v., 2.

of Babylon was routed, and pursued with great slaughter to his capital. In this battle the great Cyrus, though only sixteen years of age, first distinguished himself.* This act of folly appears to have been the origin of those forebodings of evil uttered by the father, and which appear to have thoroughly subdued the spirit of the son, who, retiring into his palace, abandoned himself to sloth two whole years, after which he was murdered by Neriglissar, the husband of his sister, supposed to be a Mede, who headed a conspiracy of the nobles.

In this account of the end of Evil Merodach, supposing him to be identical with the Belshazzar of Daniel, of which there seems little room to doubt, there is a remarkable coincidence between the narrative given by the prophet and that of profane authors. Berosus, an annalist, it is true, deserving of no great credit in his accounts of very remote periods, but who is entitled to more belief as the events he describes approach nearer to his own time, relates that he was killed at a banquet by some of his lords. Daniel writes that, on the occasion when the miraculous writing on the wall appeared, Belshazzar made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and commanded the golden and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple of Jerusalem, to be brought, that the king and his princes, his wives and concubines, might drink therefrom. "In that night," says the prophet, emphatically, was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old."+

This statement, it is obvious, can refer to nothing more than the death of Belshazzar himself, which, according to Ptolemy's canon, occurred in the year B.C. 553, seventeen years before the final destruction of Babylon, and not to the latter event, of which there is no distinct record in Holy Scripture. The Darius here mentioned, and who must not be confounded with Cyrus, is supposed, with sufficient probability, to be Neriglissar the Mede, and chief conspirator, who seized the kingdom. That this conqueror continued to reign in Babylon after his accession to the throne, appears from the sixth chapter of Daniel, where he is represented as setting over his kingdom 120 princes, of whom + Daniel, v., 30, 31.

⭑ Cyropædia of Xenophon.

the prophet himself was made the first; while Cyrus is spoken of in the 10th chapter distinctly as King of Persia. That the sovereignty of Babylon existed independently of that of the Medes and Persians for a space after the death of Belshazzar, is therefore as clearly proved from Scripture as from the canon of Ptolemy and other profane writers. Indeed, the concurrence of known dates renders this obvious and apparent; but, for farther information upon this perplexing subject, we must again refer to the authors of the Universal History.*

Neriglissar, or Darius, is represented to have been a wise and prudent prince; but the power of the Medes and Persians was so greatly on the increase, that he was forced to solicit aid from his allies to enable him to resist them. The accounts of this period are chiefly gathered from the works of Berosus and the Cyropædia of Xenophon, which last describes both the war and its issue. After an attempt at mediation on the part of the sovereign of India, who sent ambassadors for the purpose of proffering his good offices, the armies met, and a general engagement ensued, in which Neriglissar was slain, and his army utterly dispersed.

But the day on which Babylon was doomed to fall had not yet arrived. What use the conquerors made of their victory does not appear; but we find that the throne was next occupied by a youth, son of the late monarch, who by Berosus is called Laborosoarchod, and Labassoarasc by Abydenus. In this respect they both differ from Ptolemy's canon, where no such name intervenes between Neriglissar and the last king, Nabonadius. Perhaps it was in consequence of his very brief reign of only nine months that he has been omitted. He evinced a most vicious and cruel disposition, which is probably the cause which led to his assassination by Nabonadius.

The prince just named, the Labynetus of Herodotus, is understood to have been the son of Evil Merodach and of the celebrated Nitocris, who naturally enough was moved with indignation at seeing his country falling into ruin, and his people oppressed by the worthless heir of a usurper, who had excluded him from the throne. Yet, to preserve, even for a season, his hereditary power, recovered by such Ancient Universal History, vol. iv., p. 422–426. † Ibid, vol. iv., p. 418.

violent means, was a painful struggle. The resources of the kingdom, though still sufficient to check the progress of certain invaders, had been greatly impaired by misrule, and were still in a declining state, while probably Nabonadius was not qualified, either by talents or disposition, to restore their efficiency. It appears, indeed, that his reign of seventeen years derived its chief lustre from the acts of his mother Nitocris, who exerted herself not only to embellish the city and improve the surrounding country, but to fortify it so as to resist the storm which she foresaw would come from the east. Many of her hydraulic operations were calculated to extend cultivation and increase the resources of the state; but she also added to the works of the capital, constructing walls along the river-banks, to prevent an enemy from gaining access in that way. Herodotus also ascribes to her the building of the bridge, which till her time had been wanting at Babylon. Of her death there is no particular mention, but it probably was the forerunner of the defeat of her son and the fall of the monarchy.

Cyrus, having at length not only established himself firmly on the throne of Persia, but reduced a great part of Asia to obedience, once more directed his arms against Babylon. Nabonadius attempted to oppose the great warrior in the field, but was beaten back into the city, and immediately placed under a close blockade. The immense strength and perfect state of the fortifications, not less than the condition of the magazines, which contained supplies sufficient for twenty years' consumption, inspiring the citizens with confidence, they gave themselves up to unbounded luxury and enjoyment. This unwise security suggested to Cyrus the means of their overthrow. Herodotus and Xenophon both relate that, after he had passed full two years before Babylon, and had even begun to despair of success, the incautious blindness of the inhabitants induced him to attempt a bold stratagem. On the night of an annual festival, which they were wont to spend in drinking and jollity, he cut the bank of a canal which communicated with a great lake that had been formed to receive the superabundant waters of the Euphrates at the period of its flood. The river poured its contents into that reservoir, which was of capacity sufficient to receive them for a time; and, placing strong bodies of troops at the

points where the stream entered and quitted the city, which was divided by it into two parts, he commanded them, so soon as it should become shallow enough to admit of being forded, to enter by its channel. In the disorder of the night, the gates leading from each street to the bank had been left unclosed and unguarded. The Persians advanced unopposed; and the several parties, meeting at the palace, seized and put to death the king, on which the surviving inhabitants submitted to the conqueror.

Such was the termination of the Babylonian empire; and thus was commenced the fulfilment of that series of prophetic denunciations pronounced by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. It is interesting to trace how closely the circumstances that are related of this event by profane historians correspond with and illustrate the narrative of Sacred Writ. Great obscurity, no doubt, still hangs over this interesting period; and chronologists are as much perplexed by the conflicting dates deduced from various computations, as the historians have been puzzled by the numerous discrepancies that appear, both in regard to names and persons, in the records of different authors. But on this one important point there is no material dispute, namely, that the kingdom of Babylon, including the empire of Assyria, was finally subverted by Cyrus the Great, about the year 536 before the Christian era. It is equally manifest that these powerful sovereignties never afterward recovered a separate or independent existence, but passed as subordinate provinces to each succeeding conqueror that arose in the East. Alexander, indeed, entertained views of restoring the city to its ancient glory, and making it the metropolis of his immense dominions; but death prevented the accomplishment of his intentions. His successor, Seleucus, established a capital on the banks of the Tigris, but it endured only for a season, and is now, like the other, deserted and desolate. The followers of Mohammed also founded an empire, of which Mesopotamia and Assyria formed a portion; but, for their chief town, they avoided the proscribed site of Babylon, and built Bagdad on the Tigris. Yet even their more recent power has passed away like that of their predecessors: the structures they erected have ceased to exist, and the modern inhabitants can scarcely point out where the palace of the caliphs once stood. "Babylon, the glory