robe and hold dalliance with the fair (if that be an object) just as well in the great city of Ispahan, as in the little town of Hertford. Again, are young writers on their arrival in India now found to be more docile and unassuming than they used to be when Mr. Elphinstone and Mr. Grant first visited that quarter of the globe? And are writers who are not young either in years or in service, but are of the new schoolwiser, better, and more efficient in their respective employments, than such as had been educated in the plain substantial way with which alone our fathers were acquainted? If so, let them go on and prosper. If not so-if some gentlemen who never were at the Company's College, can address the natives of India in their proper tongues just as well as those who have flaunted there; if others who never studied there can acquit themselves at the courts of eastern potentates as well as such as have; then do we most earnestly, but humbly, recommend to the India Company to dispose at once and for ever of the question by sending their College to Garraway's. It is a stately edifice, well calculated för one of those public institutions which we every now and then see rising tip in the vicinity of the metropolis; and the sale of it would doubtless yield a large sum of money, though (as gentlemen always pay for their fancy)not quite so much as it cost. We admit, and most readily, that the greatest commercial company on earth acts well in having around it conspicuous marks of its transcendent greatness. But these might perhaps be wisely enough confined to their own house emphatically so called, and to the palaces of their governors. Of the sister seminary at Calcutta we may take some notice when more at leisure. In the meantime we only observe generally, that under the probability that now exists of the course of Indian colonization becoming more and more rapid, every consideration, natural or moral, is of moment, through which the present wholesome dependence on Great Britain may be affected. 17 ART. II.-Memoir of the Ruins of Babylon by CLAUDIUS JAMES RICH, Esq. Resident for the Honourable East-India Company, at the Court of the Pasha of Bagdad; with three plates. London. Longman and Co. 1815. 8vo. We shall cease to wonder at the various and often discordant WE accounts given of the celebrated Ruins which form the subject of this Memoir, when we consider that a period of four thou sand years has rolled away since the first construction of the superb metropòlis whose name they bear; and that, even in the time of the Parthian monarchy (according to St. Jerome on Esaias) it was reduced to such a state of decay, that its walls included only a park where the kings of that dynasty were accustomed to take the diversion of the chase. Within their circumference, according to the terrible denunciation in Isaiah, desolation had long fixed her gloomy reign, and Ba bylon, the Glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, was then become the habitation of the wild beasts of the desert. Well indeed, may the glory of this renowned place be said to have departed, when even its site cannot, with precision, be ascertained; and when the antiquary and the traveller are alike bewildered amid the perplexity of their researches. Mr. Rich, however, seems to have made up his mind in this respect, convinced by the forcible statements and sound arguments of Major Rennell, on the Geography of Herodotus, that the actual site of those ruins is in the environs of Hellah, a town situated on the Euphrates, built out of its ruins in the tenth century, and distant about fortyeight miles from Bagdad. This opinion is founded on, 1st. the latitude of the place, as given by Abulfeda, Ebn Haukal, Edrisi, and other oriental geographers compared with the situation of Babylon, as recorded by classical writers. 2d. the stupendous magnitude and extent of the ruins at, and near Hella; 3d. its neighbourhood to the bituminous fountains of His, or Hit,' mentioned by Herodotus Nichbur has collected, and compared their different accounts, and fixed that latitude at 32° 28. 2 It is denominated Is by Herodotus, but as the city of HIT (HEET) is exactly that distance from Hella and abounds in asphaltic productions, there can be no doubt of the corruption of the text in this instance. It is mentioned by Edrisi, commonly called the Nubian Geographer, as being washed by the FRAT or Euphrates, at page 197, when describing the courses of that river from its sources in Armenia, to its efflux into the Persian gulph. NO. IX. Aug. Rev. VOL. II. B as being only eight days' journey above it, of which viscid substance such. immense quantities were necessary in the construction of a city whose towers, whose temples, and whose palaces were built of brick dried in the sun, or baked in the furnace; and 4th. the consideration of the whole surrounding district having been for immemorial ages, and even at this day distinguished by the name of Babel. Ebn Haukal, who florished in the tenth century, writes thus: "BABEL is a small village, but the most ancient spot in all IRAK. The whole region is denominated BABEL from this place. The kings of Canaan [he means Chaldea] resided there; and ruins of great edifices still remain." Niehbur the intelligent traveller, and the present explorer of these ruins, attest that it still bears its ancient denomination. It may be remarked that in scarcely any district of Asia have so many great cities been erected as in this favored region, termed by the Arabians IRAK, those cities having sprung up, according as the Persian, Greek, and Islamite conquerors successively became masters of the country. The abundance and fertility induced by the Euphrates and Tigris, and by a thousand canals (many of them now dried up) but especially by the great canal called the NAHR-MALKA or fluvius regum-which had been the labor of so many kings and had for its object to join together those two great rivers, made it the chosen seat of princely domination. When properly irrigated and cultivated by human industry, this Mesopotamian region, which is now, for the most part, a barren desert full of lakes and morasses, must have been un ommonly productive. But the exactions of an Eastern despotic government have paralyzed the labours of the husbandman, and will probably long prevent the return of that abundance which was indispensably necessary, when population was great, and cities numerous. Among those that once raised their august summits aloft on these plains, may justly be mentioned SELEUCIA, built by Seleucus Nicator as the rival of Babylon; CTESIPHON, memorable for the magnificent palace called TANK-KESRA or the throne of the mighty 1 Ebn Haukal, translated by Ouseley, page 70. This valuable addition to our Oriental treasures in the geographical line was presented to the public by the learned translator in the year 1800, and in his elaborate prefice, he has proved it to be the source whence Abulfeda, the Nubian Geographer, and other oriental writers of that class derived many valuable materials for their respective works. Hella is not mentioned by him, for in fact it was not built until the 495th year of the Hegira or A.D. 1101, when he had been dead above half a century. Chosroes, built by Nushirvan in the 6th century,' and the more modern, but far-famed cities of Bagdad and Bassora. The greater part of the massy materials with which these cities were constructed were, doubtless, brought from the ruined towers and plundered palaces of Babylon. It ought therefore to excite our wonder that such ample rather than such scanty remains of that proud capital at this day exist. To do justice to our author's memoir, we shall present our readers with a summary sketch from Herodotus, but without wholly neglecting the accounts of Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, of the situation, magnitude, and extent of this vast metropolis, and then consider how far the ruins, explored by him with such persevering assiduity correspond with those ancient accounts, in regard to their dimensions, their internal arrangement, and the antiquities occasionally dug out of their subterraneous recesses. BABYLON was situated in a plain of vast extent, and bisected by the noble river Euphrates at this place (according to Strabo) a furlong in breadth, but according to Diodorus five furlongs-a disparity, by the way, too great to be reconciled! Over this river was thrown a bridge of massy masonry, strongly compacted with iron and lead, by which the two sides of the city were connected; and the embankments on each side, to restrain its current, were lofty, and formed of very durable materials. The city is represented by Herodotus to have been a perfect square, enclosed by a wall in circum ference four hundred and eighty furlongs. It is stated to have abounded in houses three or four stories in height, and to have been regularly divided into streets running parallel to each other, with transverse avenues occasionally opening to the river. It was surrounded with a wide and deep trench, the earth dug out of which was formed into square bricks and baked in a furnace. With these cemented together with heated bitumen intermixed with reeds, the sides of the trenches were lined, and of the same solid materials the walls of the vast dimensions above described were formed. At certain regular distances on them watch towers were erected, and below they were divided and adorned with a hundred massy gates of brass. Ebn Hauka, p. 351. 2 2 This computation, according to the presumed length of the ancient stadium, gives such a vast area for the city, (not less, according to Major Rennell, than about 126 square miles, or 8 times the area of London !!) that we must suppose some error to have here crept into the text, or the length of the stadium mistaken; but this matter shall be considered presently. In the centre of each of the grand divisions of the city, a stupendous public fabric was erected. In one (the Eastern side, as Rennell conjectures) stood the Temple of Belus; in the other (or Western division) in a large and strongly fortified inclosure, the Royal Palace intended, doubtless, for defence as well as for ornament. The Temple of Belus was a square pile on each side, of the extent of two furlongs. The tower erected in its centre was a furlong in breadth, and as much in height, the latter of which (taking the furlong at only 500 feet) is enormous, being higher, by 20 feet, than the great pyramid of Memphis, whose altitude was taken by Greaves. On this tower, as a BASE, seven other lofty towers were erected in regular succession and the whole was crowned, according to Diodorus, with a brazen statue of the God BELUS, 40 feet high! The Palace, intended also as a citadel, was erected on an area a mile and a half square, and was surrounded with three vast circular walls, which were ornamented with sculptured animals. resembling life, and painted in rich natural colours on the bricks of which they were composed, and afterwards burnt in. This may be mentioned as nearly the earliest specimen of enamelling on record. Indeed it was scarcely possible for a nation, who were "so well practised in the burning of bricks even to a vitreous hardness, to have been ignorant of this fine art; and that they could also engravé upon them, is evident (were such evidence wanting) from the characters at this day sculptured upon those that have been dug up and brought to Europe. On the far-famed "Hanging Gardens, and the subterraneous vault or tunnel constructed by Semiramis or Nitocris, or the founder of Babylon, whoever he was, there is no necessity to dilate, as every trace of them must long since have disappeared; but such, in its general outline, was the mighty Babylon ! 15 1 Exaggerated as appear to be the statements of Herodotus concerning the extent of the walls of Babylon, yet have the descriptions of the cities and people of Asia in the venerable volume of the Father of History, been found by scholars, in their eastern antiquarian researches, so frequently verified that we are willing, with our great English geographer mentioned above, to impute either to the errors of transcribers, or to some mistaken notions of the length of the Greek stade by which his computations are regulated, what, in his generally * See Herodotus, Clio, Diodorus Siculus, lib. 2, and Strabo. |