The Sun.
London, England, 1819-06-12 00:00:00

• LITERARY REVIEW.

A VOYAGE up the PERSIAN MILK!, .and a JOeRNEY
overland from INDIA to ENGLAND, in 1817 ; containing
an Account Of the Arabia Fells, Arabia Deserta, Persia,
Mesopotamia, the Garden of Eden, Babylon, Bagdad, Koor-
distal], Armenia, Asia Minor, &c. &c.—By Lienteaant
WlLLtam H inn, of the Madras Military Establishment.

(Concluded from last Saturday's Sur.)

Ti has not been found so easy to compress !
the Author's remarks on the Remains of Babylon
within the limits of Our columns as We could
have wished. He takes a view of the subject
too extended and general to admit of partial .ex-
tracts, but stlictly correct in a erligious sense;
after describing its former glories and pteeent
nothingness, he says,
" But it bad been written, and Babylon, the
glory of kingdoms, the beauty of Clothier's ex-
cellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom
end Gomorrah. 1: shall never be inhabited,
neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to
generation; neither shall the Arahiau pi.cb his
tent there ; neither shall the shepherds make their
folds Terre.' Believing as we do, in the 'divine
inspiration of the prophecies, let us the less won-‘
der at the disappeasance of every outward trace
of this great and mighty city, and submit to the
evidence which the fultilluteet of the word affords ;
a, k had bee,' written, so it has happened, mid
it is only by opening those mounds of earth, al-
ready adverted to, [list the slielitest vestige of its
mighty walls, prefaue tempi 5, or gorgeous palaces,
can now he traced. Thrse nontnas of earth, he
says, are • fist need by the decomposition Ot build-
lus Channelled HMI fuirowed by the weather,
vi,ith the cut face of them strewed with pieces of
tiles, and pottery. These are the only re-
-1114in5 ate in,,v outwardly visible. The
abledoece of the materials sufficiently point oet
the former eximenee of -an imineuse city.' I can
bear evidence to the general 'certainty of the fact,
and olay assert, that tut other remains whatever
besitk• three metieds can now be traced. Atter,
desclinitig particulars of tt.e ntighti extent and
relative position of these melancholy rernamil of
ancient cri, brit y, chiefly no the anthorhy of in•
foi mat ion obtained during Our author's rei;idence
at Bagdad, from the ingenious Mr. Rich, as pie-
ferring that gentleman's more accurate researches
to tee only casual vice he could take, lu merely
riding over the ground, he concludes with oh-
serving, ' the decline and fall of the Babylonian
Empire, indeed, was attended with this peculiar
Circum.raace, that ietleptodenaly of those netural
causes, a hid certainly portend and genially pre-
cede the desolation of empires, its entire subver-
viol) and future nothingness wail specially foretold
and mimeely described in Holy Writ.'
" The cause, as her pride, cruelty, and the sa-
milegious impiety of her king ; the tittle, Man-
ner, and instrument .being each particularly ap-
pointed, specified, and even named ; hi the height
of her glory, solder Nehuchadnezier, the Cone
queror of ttyria, Palestine,Jerusalem, and Egypt,
the proud Lord of this, great Behyloti, and the
miserable object of the divine wrath ;' yet
awhile, and the Lord's anointed Cyrus, the Per-
sian and the Medea diverting Ole Euphrates from
its appointed course, destroyed its defences, and
sehverted that sacred. Aesyrian gmpire, of which
Babylon had been esteemed the eapital and the
pitide. From that period the Persian Ma.
tterchs delighted more in Ecbataus, Persepolis,
and other places, entirely neglected it ; whilst un-
der the Macedonians, and the Pertiiien race of
kings, who sucoeeded, the building of Seleucia *
and Cteriphon •t• gradually but completely drained
it of the few inhabitants which time and tyranny
had left. The exact period of its entire abandon-
ment can scarcely be aseeriainid. In the first
century of the Christian Era, however,' it is only
spoken of as a city of the seccend magnitude ; as
the place from whence St. Peter dated one of his
Epistles, and as the appointed residence, of Elyr.
cent's, the Jewish High Priest Since then, it
has been a park for the wild beasts of the desert
to die !there. It is now a posssessiou for the
bittern §,' 'istlE VESTIGE OF A RUIN, a spot in the
desert lend."
Went of room has prevented our following the
Author through the entire description of the very
slight traces which yet remain of this once mighty
ge.en ; it would appear, indeed, that he had not
the opportunity of pursuing an enquiry which
requiriet leisure and the assistance of many hands
to prosecute the search. His remarks, however,
are net 't he less curious or accurate. On his arrival
at Bagdad, he necame acquainted with Mr. Rich
and .0 hers, who haul frequently visited the site of
Babylon.; and he freely.ackeowledges the source
from whence a part of his own information is de-
rived. in a note at the conclusion, after acknow-
ledging the authorities he has followed in his
notices of its further state, be takes a view of the
subject, we du not recollect yet to have been as-
sumed, and says, " It might, after this, perhaps.
Appear the height of presumption to attack the
very ground we have stood upon, and so declare,
that as part of these assertion' ere certeitity won-
derful and extraordinary, in regard to the mag-
nitude of the works described, there are others,
as to the circumstance's of the performance which
are not only wonderful, but absolutely impossible,
though vouched for by the greater part of those
authorities. ! The walls of Babylon, for example,
are stated, at the very lowest computation, to have
been 75 feet in height, and 32 feet thick, and con-
sequently must have contained 14,400 cubic feet
of earth to each current fathom ; of which im-
mense work, as less than one Stadium, according
to the same account, was performed per day.—
Such is the statement, and yet is it a certain fact,
concerning which any one may satisfy himself by
a reference to our most celebrated Military Works,
that 20 workmen, the greatest number that can
conveniently be applied to each current lathom,even
in field works, could-never even have thrown up
a third of the 14,400 cubic feet. of earth within
the day, &c. In a disquisition of this nature we
are not exactly aware of the influence that will
be allowed to such arguments, in disproof of the
general validity of authority so fully acknow-

!edged, 8114 53 vratautly appeakd to if, how.
e ver; this statement can disprove a part, i. e 4 the
time employed in the building of the walls, it is
certain it must reduce the assertors of the magni-
tude of these works to the alternative of yielding
time' or perfect correctness of authority,' coo:
cessions that may well affect the general import
of the whole statement."