are they in their ruins!-PERSEPOLIS ?-Its majestic pillars attest its pristine splendour; its fragments afford innumerable nests and dens for beasts and birds of prey, for toads and serpents, and other noxious reptiles. When a learned orientalist, now living, first beheld these ruins, he assured me, he was for some time unable to speak The "proud NINEVEH,"" and the "Golden BABYLON," the most populous and most magnificent cities, that ever adorned the earth, retain not even a stone to tell the melancholy history of their fate!-Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of Chaldees, shall never be inhabited, nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.— The Arabian shall not pitch his tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their folds there; but wild beasts of the desert shall be there; and their dens shall be full of doleful creatures."-Babylon, built by

of the impossibility of a description. On the west side of the Nile, still the traveller finds himself among the wonders. The temples of Gournon, Memnonium, and Medinet Aboo, attest the extent of the great city on this side. The unrivalled colossal figures in the plains of Thebes, the number of tombs excavated in the rocks, those in the great valley of the kings, with their paintings, mummies, sarcophagi, figures, &c. are all objects, worthy of the admiration of the traveller; who will not fail to wonder how a nation, which was once so great as to erect these stupendous edifices, could so far fall into oblivion, that even their language and writing are totally unknown to us."-Belzoni's Narrative, p. 37, 38.

"He will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness : and flocks shall lie down in the midst of her; all the beasts of the nations."-Zephaniah, ch. ii. v. 12, 13.

2 Isaiah, ch. xiii. v. 19, &c.

Semiramis, was first injured by Cyrus, who, diverting the Euphrates, converted the neighbouring country into a morass.-Darius Hystaspes lowered its walls and demolished its gates: gates formed of brass; and walls so thick, that six chariots could run abreast.1 -Then followed the building of Seleucia, and the conflagration of the Parthians. In the time of Pausanias nothing remained but the ruins of its walls and temples. It became a park for those kings of Persia, who succeeded to its ruins, after the Parthian empire was destroyed, to keep their wild beasts in2: in 1173, some ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace only remained 3; in the days of Texeira, these were reduced to a few footsteps:-now, even the dust, into which its fragments pulverized, have long been wafted to the Deserts.-Its site has neither name nor remnant.*-The country, round this city, was once a paradise. The soil, says Quintus Curtius, and Niger, was so fruitful, that it produced corn twice a year-and the herdsmen were accustomed to drive

As the walls of Pekin are seventy-five feet high, and so broad, that it is guarded by sentinels on horseback, should Pekin gradually experience the fate of Thebes, Memphis, and Nineveh, it will present, for a series of ages, a mass of ruins, the most wonderful, that ever the world saw. 2 St. Jerome, Comment. in Isaiæ, cap. 13, 14.

3 Benjamin's de Tudela. Itinerarium, p. 96.

4 Since this was written, Mr. Rich has published two volumes on Babylon. He found the whole face of the country covered with vestiges of buildings, brick walls, and a vast succession of mounds of rubbish : among which is only one tree; which is an evergreen, resembling the lignum vitæ. The ruins commence at Mohawil, nine miles from Hellah, and about thirty-eight miles from Bagdad: and these ruins, he says, are the ruins of the ancient Babylon.

their cattle from pasture, lest they should die of satiety. Strabo asserts, that it was covered with palms; and "as as for its millet and wheat," says Herodotus, who travelled thither, "the former grows to the height of a tree, and the latter produces more than two hundred fold. Of all regions, that I have seen," continues he, "this is the most excellent,'

VIII.

PALMYRA, once a paradise in the centre of inhospitable deserts, the pride of. Solomon, the capital of Zenobia, and the wonder and admiration of all the East, now lies" majestic though in ruins!" Its glory withered, time has cast over it a sacred grandeur, softened into grace. History, by its silence, mourns its melancholy destiny; while immense masses and stupendous columns denote the spot, where once the splendid city of the desert reared her proud and matchless towers. Ruins are the only legacy, the destroyer left to posterity. Beholding, on all sides, a wide and abandoned waste, that loses itself in an interminable horizon, the eye rests on disfigured capitals, entablatures, and pilasters, all of Parian whiteness; which, exhibiting, in various quarters, broken and disjointed skeletons of a city, once the seat of a mighty empire, the imagination luxuriates in a thousand elevated contemplations.-The dream of life assumes a more sublime character;—and, beholding the noblest labours of man, the pride of his heart, and the finest monuments of his genius, lying prostrate and in ruins, desolate and deserted, the mind recog

uncivilized. Asia presents pictures of despotism; and America detached groups of savages, in comparison with whom the Goths, the Huns and the Vandals, were Greeks and Romans. Greece, then, monopolizes most of our ideas of taste, elegance, patriotism, the elegant arts, and the domestic virtues. As to the Archipelago, there is not such a cluster of islands in the world. Let us, for a moment, cast our eyes upon the Archipelago, of the North Pacific; or of the Indian Ocean :-what nests of comparative barbarians monopolize their soils and climates! In those of Greece what beauty! what grace ! what science! and, above all, what a multitude of virtues! There is scarcely a city, or even a town, that is not hallowed by some great action; by the memory of some model of art; or by having been the cradle, or the grave, of an eminent man. Not a mountain is there, that has not been celebrated; and not a river, but what is almost as familiar to us, as the Wye, the Avon, the Thames, or the Severn. In fact, the islands, capes, bays, and promontories of Greece are the mental properties of the whole world....

To this splendid country Rome is indebted for many of its best laws; and for almost the entire circuit of its literature. For Roman literature is little more than Greek; divested of the Greek dress. Even the generals of Rome imitated the generals of Greece. Who has not read, and who has not admired, the example of arrogance, afforded to Antiochus by Popilius?-Yet the thought was originally taken from Greece. In the Peloponnesan

war, the Spartans and Athenians equally sought an alliance with the Persians. When the Athenian ambassador had finished his oration, the Spartan drew two lines;-one crooked and the other straight;-but both finishing in the same point.-These lines the Spartan exhibited to Tissaphernes, and exclaimed "chuse."

CHAPTER IX.

Places thus impart a charm to the pages of poets and historians. Who, that has perused the Greek and Roman writers with pleasure, would not read them with still greater delight on the spots, which they commemorate; or in the places, in which they were written. Hence it would be a gratification of the first order to read Virgil's Episode of Orpheus and Eurydice on the banks of the Hamus:-Lucan's Pharsalia in Thessaly; Cæsar's Commentaries on the Lake of Geneva; and Plutarch's Lives in Rome, at Athens, at Corinth, on the hillocks of Sparta, or upon the plains of Mantinea.

Former ages, says Quintilian, seem as if they had laboured only for us:-antiquity having left us so many examples, that we have little more to do, than quietly enjoy the advantages, she has bequeathed to us. If such remarks were applicable in the time of Quintilian, how much more so are they in the present!

When we stand among the African architraves, capitals and pillars, sent to the Regent of England by the Dey of Tripoli: when we cast our eyes on