The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1892-11-23


"Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that
mighty citvl for in one hour is thy judgment
come. Rev xviii. 10.
Modern scientists are doing splen-
did work in excavating the tomb Of
dead empire holding in its arms dead
city, mother and child of the same
name-Babylon. The ancient mound
invites the spades and shovels and
crowbars, while the unwashed natives
look on in surprise These scientists
find yellow bricks still impressed with
the name OF observation-disclosures, and they
go down into the sarcophagus OF a
monarchy buried more than two thou
sand years ago. May the explorations
of Rawlinson and Layard and Chevalier
and Opperto and Lotus and Chesney
be eclipsed by the present archaeology
cal uncoyering.
But is it possible this is all that re-
mains of Babylon? A city once five
times larger than London and twelve
times larger than New York? Walls
three hundred and seventy-three feet
high, and ninety-three feet thick.
Twenty-Five FURNISHED gates on each
side, with streets running clear through
to corresponding gates on the other
side. Six hundred and twenty-five
squares. More pomp and wealth and
splendor and sin than could be found in
any five modern cities combined. A
city of palaces and temples. A city
having within garden on an arti-
fetal hill four hundred feet high, the
sides of the mountain terraced. All
this built to keep the kings wife,
Amptis, from becoming homesick for
the mountainous region in which she
! mad spent her girlhood. The waters of
the Euphrates spouted up to irrigate
this great altitude into fruits and flow
ers and arborescence unimaginable. A
great river running from north to south
clear through the city, bridges over it,
tunnels under it, boats on it.
A city of bazars and of market places,
unrivalled for aromatics and unguents
and highmettled horses with grooms
| by their side, and thymewood, and Afri-
can evergreen, and Egyptian linen, and
| all styles of costly textile fabric, and
rarest puppies extracted from shell-fsh
| on the Mediterranean coast, and rarest
scarlets taken from brilliant insects in
Spain, and worries broughtfrom success
full elephant hunts in India, and dia-
monds whose flash was repartee to the
sun. Fortress within fortress, embat.
Element rising above embattlement
| Great capital of the ages But one
night, while honest citizens were asleep,
out all the saloons of saturnalia were
In full blast, and at the kings castle
they had filed the tankards for the
tenth time, and reeling and guffawing
and hiccoughing around the state table
were the rulers of the land, Gen. Cyrus
ordered his besieging army to take
shovels and spades, and they diverted
the river from its usual channel into
another direction so that the forsakeu
bed of the river became the path or
which the besieging army entered
When the morning dawned the conquer
ers We're inside the outside trenches
Babylon had fallen, and hence the sub
lime threnody of the text: ALAS alas
that great city Babylon, that mighty
city, for in one hour is thy judgment
come" But do nations die? o, yes
there is great mortality among mon
arches and republics. They are like
individuals in the fact that they are
born, they have middle life, they have
decrease, they have cradle, and ;
grave. Some of them are assassinated
some destroyed by their own hand. lie
me call the roll of some of the dead civ
ilizations and some of the dead citie
and let some one answer for them.
Egyptian civilization, stand up
"Dead" answer the ruins of Karnal
and Luxor, and from seventy pyramid
on the east side of the Nile there come
up a great chorus, crying: Dead, dead!
Assyrian empire stand up and answer
''Dcad!' cry the charred ruins of Nine
veh. After six hudred years of magnifi
cent opportunity, dead Israelitisl
Kingdom, stand up. After two hun
dred and fifty years of divine interposi
ton and of miraculous vicissitudes an,
of heroic behavior and of appalling de
pravity, dead. Ph9nicia, stand up an,
answer. After inventing the alphabe
, and giving it to the world, and sendin,
out here merchant caravans in one di
rection to Central Asia and sending GU
her navigators to the Atlantic Ocean il
another direction, dead. Pillars @
Hercules and rocks on which the J'vria,
fishermen dried their nets, all answer
dead Phenicia." Athens after PHI
dias, after Demosthenes, after Militia
ies, dead. Sparta, after Leonidas
p, after Eurybiades, after Salamis, afte
Thermopyl@; dead. Roman Empire
stand up and answer. Empire ono
: bounded by the British channel on tn
north, by the Euphrates on the east, b
; the great Sahara desert in Africa O
, the south, by the Atlantic ocean on tn
! west Home of three great civilization,
owning all the then discovered worl
that was worth owning, Roman En-
pire, answer. Gibbon, in his Rise an
Fall of the Roman Empire" say
"deadr, and the forsaken seats of tn
ruined coliseum, and the skeleton {
the aqueducts, and the miasma of tn
Campagna, and the fragments of tn
marble baths, and the useless piers {
. the Bridge Triumphalis, and tn
Mamortine prison, holding no NOR
Apostolic prisoners and the siler
. Forum, and Basilica of Constantin,
= and the arch OF Titus, and the Pantheo
come in with great chorus, crying
Dead, deadr After Horace. afte