Connecticut western news., 1871-11-03
The Downfall of Babylon.

Of the various wonders of Babyloa, the productsof sthe;labors ofsits engineers or architects, we have no -leisure-tos speak, yet the chief pride of the impulsive pop ulation was it's inipregnabl eswalls Nature had left the city easy of access on every side the ingenuity of man had covered it with Notifications. The Babylonians mocked at the futile efforts of their foes. A deep moat surrounded the city. Walls more thanAthFee' hundred feet high GOV cred each of, the sides. They were seventy-fve feet wide, formed of un- burned brick houses were built on the spacious top: yet between them ran 8 street so wide that chariot of four horses might drive or turn upon it at will. An inner wall of not inferior strength provided a new defense. Mas slve gates of bronze secured every open ing. The city was more impregnable to ancient tactics than the finest work of Vauban to his -cohtempories the redoubts of Paris to modern cannon. Twice only was Babylon taken ;sonee by surprise, and once by treachery. Nor was any ancient engineer ever able to | dry it's enormous ditch, to sap it's gigan- tic walls, taller than most European spires, to crush in it's solid gates, or penetrate it's exterior Ndefenses.! sThe mighty fortress ruled for centuries over the plains of the tEuphrates and the Tigris the fame of its strength filled the world it was celebrated in the an nals of Greece and the chronicles of the Middle Ages and in the .fancifur days of chivalry and of, barbarism every. nj ghtly castle seems to have been )modeled upon tho plan, of the Assyrian stronghold, and possessed. on an Insignificant scale, it's ditch, it's double walls, its interior keep, and its protecting towers.!s '' ..... \ - =
 Yet, compared with the enormous stone-work of Egyptor the Cyclopean have been singularly fragile It was a mass of. sun.dried bricks Clay bound together by chopped, straw and asphal- tum, was almost the sole material employ, ed by it's architects. Palaces and temples, its lofty houses and it's toweringswalls, were all composed of crumbling earth
 and when at length decay settled upon the mighty capital, and its deserted buildings were abandoned to the ravages of time, it melted away like tbaseless vision, and faded into heap of dust
 Except a. hill of broken bricks, no trace remains of the tower of Belus. The Euphrates has broken its neglected em
 bank ments, and converted the site o1 Babylon into desolate marsh. Wilc beasts make their dens in the crevices o1 the pile of ruins. Batsand, owls cling t the arid caverns. Y The | fair plains 0. Babylonia, once clad in boundless har
 vests of Mesopotamian wheat, rich witt endless groves of palm, are sown alone
 with brambles.s. The canals, the broa6
 highways, and the spacious inns art gone. The gifted Semitic race, whc
 wrought the lowered muslins, and GU
 the precious gems of Babylon, are min gled with the dust All is solitude. Tn, scornful Euphrates sweeps at will ,oye
 the fields it was once condemned to fer
 tilize, and mocks at the. faded glories O Cyrus or Samifanis, of Darius and Alex ander, so low has Babylon fallen
 r Its renown was altogether material nc
 poets, historians, musicians, artists sprang up amidst it's crowded throngs
 A single Burns or 8 Babylonian Pinda: might have saved it from contempt; ant but for the pen of cultivated GreeE it mighty towers anF it's gigantic wall would have risen and sunk undistinguish ed upon the Assyrian plain but for tn cry of Hebrew prophecy the name o Babylon would never have become thu T 4symbol of civic cor1uption,y its fat the lesson of all ages. <, .,-r,,