and baked in a furnace. The bitumen, melted by heat, is poured over the structure at every thirtieth course of bricks, which, running down into the interstices, cements the whole, by cooling, into one solid mass. The city and the tower proceed simultaneously; and as there are many artificers, both are rapidly rising. What vastness and grandeur of design are apparent in the work! One who saw both long afterwards, describes the city as a square, each side of which measured one hundred and twenty stadia, or fifteen miles; and the tower as having for its basement a cube of solid masonry measuring a furlong on every side. On this a smaller story is erected, and on this another, until eight, successively diminishing in size, already elevate the proud edifice to the sky. A staircase, winding round the outside of the building, leads from story to story.

But now it is time for God to interfere. He looks down from heaven, and sees with displeasure, that, with very few exceptions, all the children of men are engaged in following the devices of their own evil hearts. Noah and Shem, with perhaps a small godly remnant, have protested against the baneful enterprise, but without effect, and they have retired from their fellows. The work has been suffered to proceed until the design of the contrivers has become fully manifest, and their pride and rage against the Most High abundantly developed. Yet He deals with them in undeserved mercy; He does not pour upon them the fierceness of his wrath, but contents himself with putting an effectual stop to their vain-glorious design.

Hitherto there had been no deviation from the primitive tongue spoken by the antediluvians, and

THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

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preserved by Noah and his family. "The whole earth was of one language and one speech." But now, by a miraculous interposition, the Almighty God confounds their language, introducing new tongues and dialects, and obliterating from their minds all remembrance of that which they had hitherto spoken. Utter confusion is the immediate consequence; an undistinguishable jargon of sounds, in which no man understands his fellow; and hence the work is brought to a sudden period, from the impossibility of combined operation in the absence of a common vehicle for the communication of ideas.

Thus easily does God baffle the proudest designs of men, when they interfere with his purposes. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision." And thus shall it ever be; those who set themselves up against the revealed purposes of God, whether in providence or in grace, and persist in their mad obduracy, shall not only find that their schemes are vain and useless, but shall reap everlasting shame and confusion as their portion.

The desire of these bold builders was to make for themselves a name. Yet of not a single individual of the mighty multitude has history preserved the name; if we except Nimrod, of whom it is emphatically said, “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel [confusion]."

More than four thousand years have elapsed since the event which we have described took place; yet there, in the midst of the desolate plain of Shinar, stands the mighty pile, a burnt and blackened heap, an eloquent witness of the power and yet the impo

tency of man. Kingdoms and cities have risen and fallen there, leaving scarcely a trace behind; but there rolls still, in silent dignity, the broad Euphrates, and on its banks stands yet the shrunken and shapeless, but still gigantic ruin.

The following description of the great heap, called by the Arabs "Birs Nimroud," is given by Mr. Rich in his "Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon," and is interesting as showing the present condition of the mightiest and most ancient of human works of art. "The Birs Nimroud is a mound of an oblong form, the total circumference of which is 762 yards. At the eastern side it is cloven by a deep furrow, and is not more than fifty or sixty feet high; but at the western side it rises in a conical figure to the elevation of 198 feet, and on its summit is a solid pile of brick thirty-seven feet high by twenty-eight in breadth,

THE MESOPOTAMIAN VALLEY.

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diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular, and rent by a large fissure extending through a third of its height. It is perforated by small square holes disposed in rhomboids. The fine burnt bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them, and so excellent is the cement, which appears to be lime-mortar, that it is nearly impossible to extract one whole. The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork of no determinate figure, tumbled together, and converted into solid vitrified masses, the layers of brick being perfectly discernible. These ruins stand on a prodigious mound, the whole of which is itself a ruin, channelled by the weather, and strewed with fragments of black stone, sandstone, and marble. In the eastern part, layers of unburnt brick, but no reeds, are to be seen. In the north side may be seen traces of building exactly similar to the brick pile. At the foot of the mound a step may be traced scarcely elevated above the plain, exceeding in extent, by several feet each way, the true or measured base; and there is a quadrangular enclosure round the whole as at the Mujelibè, [another immense ruin, supposed to have been the palace of the kings of Babylon,] but much more perfect, and of greater dimensions."

GENESIS XII.

LET us in imagination transport ourselves to a winding valley in the midst of a wild and precipitous mountain-region. Some of the loftiest peaks

are covered with snow; and patches of white, speckling the mountain side, though the spring is far advanced, tell us that we are now in a country where the reign of winter is familiar. A stream of considerable size pours through the lower ground, now hemmed in by precipitous walls of rock, now dashing in a sheet of foam over a broken ledge, now brawling in its deep channel beneath, covered with fragments of ice and half-melted masses of mountain snow, and now spreading itself over a level tract in a broad and shallow pool. We are again on the banks of the Euphrates, in its upper course, and the uneven country around us is the highland of Mesopotamia.

The water of the river is of a chilling coldness, yet the air, in the sheltered bottoms, is mild and balmy, and the rays of the sun, reflected from the mountain sides, pour down with great power upon the verdant