The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1849-07-19
VOL. 5.-NO. IL.

Assyria proper, Med a and Babylonia, ex-
cluslve of immense conquests extending
from the Nile 10 the Indus, was founded by
Minus two thousand years before the
Christian era; and, after all political muta-
tlons and misfortunes to the general state.
it was not until about fourteen hundred
years later that the capital city, Nineveh.
was destroyed by the united efforts of its
once subjects, the Medians and Bebylo-
mans. Nineveh was fye hundred years
cd before the Hebrews fed from Egypt;
ght hundred years old when the Phraohs
commenced architectural works which are
the wonders of the world; eleven hundred
years before the mighty empire was shat
tered in the hands of the luxuaious Sar-
darapalus; twelve hundred yeaas before
the hrst thatched Roman hovel was built
among the laurels of the Palatine.
And this, then, is all that remains of
Nlneveh-the glorious, the mighty, the
imperial city; which after ruling the an
cient world for fourteen centuries, al last.
sacked by armies and wasted with FIRE,
was buried away out of sight, actually en-
toned under the earth-the sands cf the
desert, heaped by every summer simeon
-twenty-four hundred years ago. With
in two hundred years after its fall, the ten
/ thousand Greeks marched over the DESC
late hillocks, without dreaming that Nine
veh lay below-Nineveh, whose name
has already been forgotten upon the very
site OF It's temples ana palaces. Nothing
but the moundeI sand; and under that sand,
walls, statues, bricks, and the marble hii-
tories of the kings of kings, before whom
the earth once trembled! One startles a.
gain from the regery into which Mr.. Lay
ards discoveries have ihrown him, to look
upon wretched parehed country, hot,
slckly and sterile, occupied by lniserably
poor and ablect Arabs, and wonder how i,
was possible such an empire as the Assy-
rian could have ever existed in the home Of
such barbarians, or how such barbarians
could ever have taken the place of Semi
ramis and the kings that were her slaves
and satraps.
/ Standing on the mound Of Nimroud and
remembering the mournfal and terrible
changes Of four thousand years, we cannot
/ but ask ourselves whether such things as
/ have been will not be again-be with man 8
modern, as with most ancient empres.-
The Arab system, now existing in all Mes
! opotamia, is precisely analogous to the
old patriarchal system of the same coun-
t:y, and is u perfectly republican and dem
ocraic one; the Sheiks of the present, like
these of the remotest opochs, having an
authority very similar to that of Indian
Chiefs in the New World. Out of such
pastoral democracies grew the tyranny
and grandeur ofthe Assyrian state; and dy-
ing, 1t was dissolved iato IFS native ele-
ments. Can such tyranny and grandeur
ever, IN any way, grow up in the Western
hemisphere, to be ultimately over-thrown
and succeeded by native barbarism2 We
are wise in our generation-as they were
who, of old, boasted the power and strength
of states which the earth has long since
ceased to know; but who can penetrate the
secrets or foretell the Nineveh-like chan
ges which are to take place during the mex,
four thousand years"