VOL. VI.

GENERAL

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UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.

FROM MARTIN'S PRINT.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.

WITH the artist's permission, we present the readers of the Saturday Magazine with a copy of Martin's celebrated engraving, the Fall of Babylon, one of the finest of his efforts. Among the various productions from the same masterly hand, illustrative of sacred history, the engraving from which our print is copied holds a distinguished place.

The history of the fall of Babylon may be found at large in Herodotus, and in JOSEPHUS's Antiquities of the Jews. It is likewise described by Strabo, Xenophon, and Diodorus Siculus, The profligacy and impiety of Belshazzar, King of Babylon, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, had excited the Divine anger, and at the visible interposition of the God whom he had derided and blasphemed, he lost at once his kingdom and his life. Having provided a splendid entertainment for the nobles of his court, he commanded to be brought the golden cups, those spoils of the Jewish temple which Nebuchadnezzar, after his successful siege of Jerusalem, had carried into the sanctuary of his own God. These splendid goblets he ordered to be used by his guests in their drunken revelry: thus not only profaning the sacred vessels originally devoted to the purposes of the Jewish ceremonial worship, but likewise polluting those of his country's gods; as those Jewish vessels had been consecrated to the rites of his own religion. This double sacrilege did not pass without its retribution. During the feast, the most odious blasphemies were uttered by the king, and the revellers who composed his court. They sang praises to those divinities of wood and stone which were the objects of their hollow adoration, as if in mockery of Him, who, though "mighty to save," proved to the Chaldean king and his nobles, that he is mighty also to destroy.

In the midst of their impious feast, the finger of God inscribed their sentence upon the wall of the court in which they were audaciously deriding him. Whilst in the very act of profaning the sacred vessels, the king, perceived, to his utter consternation, a hand tracing upon the wall in legible characters, the terrible record of his doom. Astounded at a sight so singular and appalling, he sent for the astrologers, who at that time were regularly retained in eastern courts, together with all persons who had acquired repute as diviners, prophets, and interpreters of dreams. From these he demanded an explanation of the mysterious writing. The seal of God, which they could not break, was upon it. Amazed and confounded, the king dismissed them, and called others to unveil the fearful mystery in which his destiny appeared to be shrouded. No one could read the record. The royal blasphemer was abashed, and his conscience shrunk from the apprehension of impending destruction.

Nitocris, his mother, a woman of masculine energies, who had successfully fortified her native city against the Medes and Persians, roused the effeminate king from the stupor of despair, by telling him to send for Daniel the Jew, This "servant of the living God," as he is elsewhere styled in Scripture, was then, with many of his countrymen, in captivity at Babylon, and had rendered himself celebrated among the Chaldeans, by having interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar. The king accordingly sent for the prophet, and desired him to interpret the writing which had baffled the penetration of all his wise men. The Chaldean monarch promised to bestow upon Daniel the third part of his dominions, if he should succeed in unfolding the awful mystery still visible upon the wall, where it had been traced by a supernatural hand. But, to use the

words of Josephus *, "Daniel desired that he would keep his gifts to himself; for that which is the effect of wisdom and of Divine revelation admits of no gifts, and bestows its advantages on petitioners freely; nevertheless, that he would explain the writing to him, which denoted that he must soon die, and this, because he had not learned to honour God. And moreover, because he had quite forgotten how Nebuchadnezzar was removed to feed among wild beasts for his impieties, and did not recover his former life among men and his kingdom, but upon God's mercy to him, after many supplications and prayers; who did therefore praise God all the days of his life, as one of Almighty power, and who takes care of mankind. Daniel also put Belshazzar in mind how greatly he had blasphemed against God, and had made use of his sacred vessels among his depraved nobles and concubines. That, therefore, God seeing this, was displeased with him, and had declared by this writing that his life would have a most awful termination. He then explained the writing as follows.-MENE: This, if it be expounded in the Greek language, will signify a number, because God has numbered so long a time for thy life and for thy government, and that there remains but a small portion.-TEKEL: This signifies a weight, and means that God has weighed thy kingdom in the balance, and finds it already on the decline.-PHARES: This also, in the Greek tongue, signifies a fragment: God will therefore break thy kingdom in pieces, and divide it among the Medes and Persians."

The king was confounded at this interpretation; nevertheless, he bestowed upon Daniel what he had promised. Immediately after, the city was taken, and Belshazzar put to death. The manner of its capture was singular. About 540 years before the birth of Christ, Cyrus the Great had invested the capital of Chaldea. His armies had been every where victorious; yet trusting in the prodigious strength of his city, and in the wise counsels of Nitocris the queen mother, the Babylonians derided the efforts of the Persian. They had provisions sufficient for a consumption of twenty years. The walls of their city were of prodigious strength, being 350 feet high, and 87 thick. They were built of bricks, formed of a material so firm in texture, as to be harder than granite. These bricks were cemented together with a glutinous earth that in time became as hard as the masses which it united.

In spite of all these mighty obstacles, Cyrus resolved upon the reduction of this apparently impregnable capital. To this end he constructed a number of wooden towers, higher than the walls, and made many desperate efforts to carry the place by storm; but every attempt was foiled. He next drew a line of circumvallation round the city, thus hoping to starve the enemy into a surrender. Two years were spent in this unavailing blockade, when an opportunity presented itself of effecting that purpose by stratagem, which he had hitherto failed to accomplish by open force. Having heard that the king was about to celebrate a great festival, and knowing, from his licentious character, that it would be a scene of the grossest riot, he posted a part of his army close to the spot where the river Euphrates entered the city, and another at the opposite side where it passed out, with orders to enter the channel wherever it was fordable. He then detached a third party to open the head of a canal connected with the Euphrates, and thus admit the river into the trenches which he had opened *Jewish Antiquities, Book 10, Chap. 11.

round the city. By these means the river was so
completely drained by midnight, that the troops
easily made their way along its bed, and the gates
upon the banks having been left unclosed, in conse-
quence of the revels, or neglected during the confu-
sion of the festival, the besiegers found no interruption
to their progress. Having thus penetrated into the
heart of the enemy's capital, they met, according
to agreement, at the gates of the palace. Here,
after a feeble resistance, they easily overpowered the
guards, cut to pieces all who opposed them, slew the
king, and within a few hours received the submission
of Babylon the mighty. From this period it ceased
to be the metropolis of a kingdom, and its grandeur
rapidly declined. Not a memorial now remains of its
former greatness, and scarcely even a trace of its site.
Where now are Troy and mightier Babylon,
On their proud site the earth is wild and bare,
O'er them stern Time has a full victory won,
And they are mingled with the things that were.
Thus works destruction; from his secret lair
He skulks abroad to mar what man has made;-
Decay, slow mining, meets us every where.
Earth's pageantries are fugitive-here fade
"All things alike-the debts of nature must be paid.
In the print the artist has endeavoured to exhibit
the Chaldean capital at the height of its glory. In
the distance, the mighty tower of Babel, which he
supposes to have been still standing upon the plains
of Shinar, rears its stupendous bulk, hiding its
summit in the clouds, a monument of human pre-
sumption and human impotency.

The high tower upon the bank of the river is the celebrated temple of Belus, the external buildings of which were raised by Nebuchadnezzar. This huge tower was six hundred feet square at the base, and the same number of feet high. The temple was set apart for the worship of Baal, and the treasure contained within its walls, in the palmy days of the Chaldean empire, has been estimated at forty-two millions sterling.

Upon the right of the temple of Belus, as the spectator faces the water on that side, stands the palace of Semiramis, four miles in circumference. To this extraordinary woman Babylon first owed its She left everywhere immortal monugreatness. ments of her genius and of her power. She was the greatest warrior of her time. To facilitate communication with her capital, she hollowed mountains and filled up valleys, and water was conveyed at a vast expense by immense aqueducts, to deserts and unfruitful plains.

The bridge seen in the print was built by Nitocris, the mother of Belshazzar. In the right-hand corner of the picture is seen the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, eight miles in circumference, and surmounted by the celebrated hanging gardens. These occupied a square of four hundred feet on every side, and consisted of spacious terraces raised one above the other, until they reached the height of the city walls. The whole pile was sustained by immense arches, built upon other arches, and supported on either side by a wall twenty-two feet thick.

The crowd which appears in the bed of the river is the enemy setting fire to the Babylonian navy. On the right of these is the Persian horse headed by Cyrus.

The group in the near foreground consists of the king, and a party of the enemy; these attack and destroy him in sight of several of his concubines, who had escaped with him from the palace.

Here is one of those awful pages in the records of time, which may be summed up in this brief exclamation,," How are the mighty fallen!"

J. H. C.

SUCCESSIVE STATES OF HUMAN LIFE. In our seasons we have the grateful succession of the Spring, the Summer, and the Autumn: in our vegetation, the new leaf, the beauteous flower, and the nutritious fruit. These correspond with contemporaneous atmospherical changes of our system, and are followed by that seeming death of nature, which frosty and chilling Winter brings on.

The insect and reptile world exhibit similar changes. The Spring recalls or hatches their tribes into life and feeling, in a creeping state. They have their Summer day of playful gaiety, varying in its duration, and enjoy existence in a winged form: their Autumn is their time of depositing their eggs: and from that they depart into death or torpor. These four states of all that have vital being, growth, maturity, decline, and death,-and these annual successions of the seasons which are so much associated with the life, produce, and suspension of vegetative nature, have been made the characteristics of our terrestrial system.

In the human race, an analogous series of changes and states takes place, with such striking moral and intellectual results, as to excite our admiration at the kindness of our Creator, for having formed His human nature on a plan of such wise benevolence. By this He has appointed that every human being should have a season of childhood; another of youth; a third of full maturity, with its parental produce; and a following period of decline, and death, to pass into another state of existence elsewhere.

These laws are attached to all who are permitted to pass through the regular course of human life; though its Giver has reserved to Himself the resistless right of calling each of us away at whatever part of it He shall think proper, without completing the full progress of these successive states.-SHARON TURNER.

WHAT Would you say, if wherever you turned, whatever
you were doing, whatever thinking, whether in public or
private with a confidential friend, telling your secrets, or
alone planning them, if, I say, you saw an eye constantly
fixed on you, from whose watching, though you strove ever
so much, you could never escape; and even if you closed
your own eye to avoid, you still fancied that to get rid of
was impossible,-that it could perceive your every thought?
The supposition is awful enough. There is such an Eye,
though the business and struggles of the world too often
prevent us from considering this awful truth. In crowds
we are too much interrupted, in the pursuit of self-interest
we are too much perverted, in camps we are struggling for
life and death, in courts we see none but the eye of a human
sovereign; nevertheless, the Divine eye is always upon us,
and when we least think of it, is noting all, and, whatever
we may think of it, will remember all.-De Vere.
THE hour is coming, and it is a fearful and solemn hour
even to the wisest and the best; the hour is coming, when
we must bid adieu to the scenes which please us, to the
families we love, to the friends we esteem. Whether we
think, or whether we think not, that body which is now
warm and active with life, shall be cold and motionless in
death,-the countenance must be pale, the eye must be
closed, the voice must be silenced, the senses must be
destroyed, the whole appearance must be changed by the
remorseless hand of our last enemy. We may banish the
remembrance of the weakness of our human nature, we
may tremble at the prospect of dissolution; but our re-
luctance to reflect upon it, and our attempts to drive it
from our recollection, are in vain. We know that we are
sentenced to die, and though we sometimes succeed in
casting off for a season the conviction of this unwelcome
truth, we never can entirely remove it. The reflection
haunts us still, it attends us in solitude, it follows us into
society, it lies down with us at night, it awakes with us in
the morning. The irrevocable doom has passed upon us,
and too well do we know it, dust thou art, and unto dust
thou shalt return.-TOWNSEND, "'..

THE climate of Ceylon, except in the interior, where the dews fall, and fogs prevail to excess, is for the most part healthy, and the diseases peculiar to this island few in number. The most dreadful is elephantiasis. Nothing can be more frightful than this infliction. The whole body is sometimes overspread with large cutaneous tubercles, which give it the revolting appearance of being covered with a squalid elephant's hide. In some instances the joints of the fingers and toes drop off, while the leg occasionally grows to such a prodigious size, that the afflicted sufferer can scarcely drag it after him, looking more like the trunk of a dark rough-coated tree than a leg. It is scarcely possible to conceive any thing more terrible than this visitation, to which the natives of Ceylon, and more especially in the interior, are particularly liable. It sometimes torments the unhappy patient for years-twelve, fourteen, and even twenty, before it terminates his sufferings, and is, I believe, seldom or never radically cured. They who are thus afflicted, are generally shunned by their neighbours, as was the case with lepers under the Jewish constitution. They seem to excite no sympathy except among those who are similarly conditioned, but in the healthy, they excite universal disgust. It is a pitiable thing to see these wretched creatures dragging along their macerated and ulcerous bodies, with cadaverous countenances and sunken eyes, expressive of the most pitiable suffering, and without any hope of a termination to their torments but in death, which comes tardily to their relief, and releases them only when they no longer retain the physical capacity of endurance.

Another formidable disease in this island is dysentery, of a peculiarly aggravated character, in which the whole tract of the large intestines is covered with ulcers. It is at times extremely destructive, and when it assumes the See his Account of the Interior of Ceylon,

of this infernal receptacle, such as a parricide, the murderer of a priest or of a teacher, a scorner of Boodhoo, or of the gods, they who oppose the common worship, and who injure or profane their sanctuaries. The wretched beings who are consigned to this abode of everlasting torment, are left in darkness, where there is not the slightest visual perception. Here they are exposed to the most intense cold, and visited by the perpetual cravings of an appetite so ravenous and insatiable that they bite, tear, and devour each other. Their sufferings, however, do not end here, for those who are devoured instantly revive; indeed, the principle of life never for a moment becomes extinct, but the body is no sooner disunited than it is restored to its orignal form and capability of endurance, changing its abode from one place to another in this capacious world of woe, without mitigation and without end.

BOODHISM.

streets, which extend the whole length of the town, intersecting each other at right angles, near the centre. Smaller streets run parallel with these, to which there is a communication, at intervals, by means of smaller alleys or lanes, that severally lead into them; and there is a broadway at the foot of the rampart, carried entirely round the fort, which is composed of seven bastions of different sizes, connected by intervening curtains, and defended by three hundred pieces of heavy artillery. The fort is a mile and a quarter in circumference, being nearly encompassed by the sea, and bounded, towards the land, by an extensive freshwater lake. The communication with the land is by causeways betwixt the sea and the lake. Though from its insular position, and the strength of its fortifications, this fort might be considered almost impregnable, yet it surrendered to the British forces, in 1796, without making that resistance which might have been contemplated. From the coolness and salubrity of its situation, it forms a more comfortable residence than probably any other situation in India.

THESE notions of heaven and hell are to be found in the Boodhist Scriptures, Boodhism being the national religion of Ceylon. The antiquity of this religion, the quarter in There is no harbour at Columbo; from the beginning of which it originated, and the direction in which it spread, October to the end of March, vessels anchor in the outer are interesting subjects of inquiry, but would be out of roads, the small bay near the city affording only occasional place here: I may say, however, in a few words, that the shelter to very small craft. The houses within the fort are pretensions of the Boodhists themselves, on the subject of neatly built of stone, clay, and lime, and although genethe antiquity of their religion, are of two kinds, one pro-rally not more than one story high, give the city more the bable, the other absurd in the extreme. In the latter, they appearance of an European town than any other in India. connect it with the most monstrous fables of their system of Before the arrival of the British, the houses were glazed, the universe, giving it an existence in ages so remote as to but our countrymen, preferring the admission of air in a set all calculation at defiance. Their other notion is much hot climate, to its exclusion, have established Venetian more rational, and comes freely within the scope of our blinds; glass, therefore, is now every where exploded. In credibility. They who maintain this view, reckon the date front of every house is a large open viranda, supported on of Boodhism from the time it was restored by the Boodhist wooden pillars, to protect the rooms from the influence of divinity whom they now worship, who lived only about six the sun; these virandas have sloping roofs, and are hundred years before the commencement of the Christian chosen as the most comfortable places for enjoying the æra. If these latter pretensions be just, and there is no evening's refreshments. The punka was first introduced fair ground for questioning them, it will, of necessity, into the houses at Ceylon by Lieut.-General Hay Macdofollow, that the Brahminical religion is the most ancient of nald, in 1799, on his arrival from Calcutta, and is now unithe two; and this the Boodhists themselves do not deny, versally adopted by the English residents. It is one of as they admit that the latter religion was in full operation those necessary adjuncts to a domestic establishment in when their Boodhoo appeared to revive their own religion, this torrid clime, without which, in the hot seasons, the which had previously become extinct. The whole subject house becomes intolerable. of the controversy, as to which has the higher claim to antiquity, the Brahminical or Boodhist religion, is one of great interest, but of extreme difficulty.

COLUMBO.

THE modern capital of Ceylon is Columbo, situated on the south-west coast. The plan of the city is tolerably regular. It is divided into four principal quarters by the two principal

The government-house stands on the north side of the fort, fronting the sea. It is a handsome building consisting of two stories, with two wings upon one floor. It has an elegant portico, leading into a lofty and capacious hall.

*The Punka is a light thin frame covered with calico, suspended from the ceiling of the principal rooms, and waved over the heads of those who are seated below, like a large fan.