The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1892-11-09

Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that
mighty city for in one hour is thy judgment
come."-Rev xviii TO-
Modern scientists are doing a splen-
did work in excavating the tomb of a
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 Nebuchadnezzar, 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 arch@ologi-
cal uncovering.
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 he 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
had 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 marketplaces,
unrivalled for aromatics and unguents
and high-mettled 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-fish
on the Mediterranean coast, and rarest
scarlets taken from brilliant insects in
Spain, and ivories brought from success
full elephant hunts in India, and dia-
monds whose flash was repartee TO the
sun. Fortress within fortress, embat-
tlement rising above embattlemcnt
Great capital OF the ages. But one
night, while honest citizens were asleep,
but 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 forsalSeu
bed of the river became the path on
which the besieging army entered.
When the morning dawned the conquer.
ers were 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 ar,
born, they have middle life, they have
a decrease, they have cradle, and I
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 cite
and let some one answer for them.
Egyptian civilization, stand up
Dead" answer the ruins of Karnal
and Luxor, and from sew nty pyramid
on the east side Of the Nile tuere come
upa great chorus, crying: Dead, dcad!'
Assyrian empire stand up and answer
>''Deadl' cry the charrcd 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
tion and OF miraculous vicissitudes ant
OF heroic behavior and of appalling de
pravity, dead. Phenicia, stand up an,
answer After inventing the alphabe
and giving it TO the world, and sendinI
out here merchant caravans in one di
rection to Central Asia and sending ou
her nnvigators to the Atlantic Ocean Il
another direction, dead. Pillars O
Hercules and rocks on which the Tyria,
fishermen dried their nets, all answer
"Dead PhGnicia-" Athens after PHI
dias, after Demosthenes after Militia
des, dead. Sparta, after Leonidai
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
'deadp, and the forsaken seats Of tn
ruined coliseum, and the skeleton {
the aqueducts, and the miasma Of Oh
Campagna, and the frsgments of th
marble baths, and the pseless piers Z
the Bridge Triumphnlis and th
Mamertine prison, holding no NOR
Apostolic prisoners, and tho siler
Forum, and Basilica Of Constantine
ana fhe arch Of Titus and tho Pantheo
come in with great choruA crying
Dead, deadl" After Horace, aft<
Virgil, after Tacitus, after Cicero, deat
After Horatius on the bridge, and CHI
cinnatus, the former oligarch, aftt