Babylon was only partially inhabited; and a wide space within the walls was cultivated. It diminished as Seleucia increased, and the latter, which was very populous, became the greater city. Babylon became gradually more and more desolate, till, in the fourth century, its walls formed an enclosure for wild beasts, and the place where the golden city had stood, which reigned over the nations, was converted into a field for the chase a hunting place for the pastime of the Persian monarchs. The name of Babylon was cut off from the history of the world. And a long interval succeeded without any record con cerning 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 Mr. Rich, formerly British resident at Bagdad; Mr. Kinnier, author of the Memoir of Persia ; Sir Robert Ker Porter, Captain Frederick, Mr. Buckingham, and by the Honourable Major Keppel. There is some diversity of opinion among these witnesses, as to what particular palace, or edifice, of ancient Babylon, is to be considered as now represented by a particular mound, or heap; but the greatness of the desolation is visible to all, and admits neither of denial nor dispute. For, from being the glory of kingdoms,' Babylon is now the greatest of ruins; and after the lapse of two thousand four hundred years it exhibits to the view of every traveller the precise scene defined

in prophecy; and it could not now be described in more appropriate and graphic terms than the following, though such words had never been known to be its burden.'

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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.*

The superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the natural terror at the wild beasts which dwell among the ruins of Babylon, restrain the Arab from pitching his tent, or shepherds from making their folds there. The princely palaces and habitations of Babylon, utterly destroyed, are now nothing but unshapely heaps of bricks and rubbish; along the sides, or on the summits of which, instead of the stately chambers which once they formed, are now caverns, where porcupines creep, and owls and bats nestle; where lions' find a den, and jackals, hyænas, 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

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Isa. xiii. 19, &c.; xiv. 22, &c. Jerem. l. 13, 23, 39, &c.; li. 13, 26, &c.

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 be no more 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 upon Babylon, she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.' At that season also large deposits of the waters,' as Sir Robert Ker Porter, in his vivid description of the ruins of Babylon, remarks, are left stagnant between the ruins; again verifying the threat denounced against it,— I will make thee a possession for the bittern, and pools of water. The same

author states, that the abundance of the country is gone as clean away as if the besom of destruction had swept it from north to south. (Isa. xiv. 23.) And the View of Babylon,' inserted in his travels, and placed as a frontispiece to this work, is truly a picture of utter desolation, presenting its heaps to the eye, and showing how, as if literally buried under them,- Babylon is brought down to the grave.'

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The annexed is a sketch of the Birs Nimrod, as given by Sir R. K. Porter.

Fallen Babylon bears another mark of judg ment, which has not been effected by the overflowings of the Euphrates, by the ravages of wild beasts, by the devastations of time, nor by the rapacity of man. 'There are, on the ruins of Birs Nimrod, or temple of Belus, which was standing after the beginning of the christian era, large fragments of brick-work that have been 'completely molten,' and that ring like glass, which must not only have been subjected to a heat 'equal to that of the strongest furnace,' but which, being vitrified all around, bear evident proof,' as Mr. Buckingham remarks, of the operation of fire having been continued on them, as well after they were broken down as before,' and bear as evident proof that the ruin resembles, to use, in justice, the words of Major Keppel, what the scriptures prophesied it should become, a burnt mountain.' (Jer. li. 25.) It is still worthy, from its mere immensity, of being a relic of Babylon the great, for, though a mass of ruins, it is still two hundred and thirty-five feet high. From the

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summit we had a distinct view,' says Major Keppel, of the heaps which constitute all that now remains of ancient Babylon; a more complete picture of desolation could not well be imagined. The eye wandered over a barren desert, in which the ruins were nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited. It was impossible to behold this scene, and not to be reminded how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present: that she should never be inhabited; that the Arabian should not pitch his tent there; that she should become heaps; that her cities should be a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.'

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The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken.' They were so broad, that, as ancient historians relate, six chariots could be driven on them abreast. They existed for more than a thousand years after the prophecy was delivered. They were numbered among the seven wonders of the world.' And what can be more wonderful now, or what could have been more inconceivable by man when Babylon was in its strength and glory, than that the broad walls of Babylon should be so utterly broken that it can scarcely be determined with certainty that even a vestige of them remains. The trench out of which they were formed must now, in a great measure, be filled with them again; for both have alike disappeared. Captain Frederick could discover no appearance of the wall, after an active search of six days. One of the chapters, sixty pages in length, of Mr. Buckingham's travels, is entitled,