own prowess, they had no claim upon the interest of an after age.

The Pyramids we may be justly allowed to consider as the earliest types for raising architectural structures of unusually large dimensions; and their form must be attributed to a knowledge of the regular solid figures; for, setting aside the theory that these piles had any astronomical utility, it cannot be questioned that their form and position were alike intentional, though with what object, we are, at this remote period, unable to discover. We are certain they were tombs, and intended to resist the ravages of all-destroying Time, and rescue the mortal remains, as well as the reputation, of their kings, from utter oblivion. But a higher power than that of the mightiest dynasty of the old world has willed it otherwise. The casing exists, but the dust of the mighty potentates who were there entombed, has been abstracted and scattered to the winds. We know that the crumbling bones-even the head that devised one of the monumental piles—and the hand that wielded the sceptre of sovereign command to call together millions of obedient subjects to construct it, are now exposed to vulgar gaze in our own city of London.

Sacred and profane history inform us, that some 600 years before our era, Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest monarch that then reigned on the earth, the despotic master of a vast empire, after surveying the monuments of his genius and grandeur, and elated with the intoxication of his state, exclaimed, "Is not this the great Babylon that I have built?" The feverish flush of pride subsiding, he, like Xerxes as he boastfully surveyed his mighty armament, mused on what should

come to pass hereafter, knowing that a mightier conqueror than he, even Death, would one day come, and level all his greatness with the dust. A vision was vouchsafed him, which the learned of his own people failing to expound, he had recourse to one of his Hebrew captives for its solution. The prophet Daniel showed the mighty monarch, that in his dream he had seen a great image, "whose brightness was excellent, whose form was terrible." That the head of this image was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, and his body and thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and feet of clay mingled with iron; that a stone cut without hands smote the image on the feet, and that the whole image broke, and became like chaff before the wind, and then the stone became a mountain, and filled the whole earth. This the prophet thus expounded:-the king himself was the head of gold; that after him should come another kingdom, typified by the silver; and then a third should follow, represented by the brass, which should hold sway over the whole earth. Thus, agreeably to the words of prophecy, we have seen the Persian overthrow the Babylonian monarchy, and the Macedonian in turn subvert the Persian; the Roman empire was likewise shadowed out in its strength, its decline, and its fall; the various kingdoms that arose out of the ruins of iron-handed Rome, are exhibited by the emblems of clay and iron. The last empire figured by the stone that had destroyed the image, is the kingdom of Christ. Christianity came not with might and power to establish a worldly kingdom or overthrow a dynasty; but its whole influence, spiritual in its nature, and gentle in its effects, worked on silently and unseen, and its spirit has at length spread abroad over almost the entire

known world; nor will it rest till, strengthening its stakes, and stretching its cords, it occupies all space in the moral universe of man. This marvellous dream, that pierced through so long a period of history, and which indicated events with a distinctness not to be mistaken, is one of the numerous convincing proofs that the Bible is too miraculous a book to be other than it pretends to be, and that our holy religion, after its long night of trial, becoming better understood, and more devoutly because more fairly received, will continue to pour down its richest blessings on the world in times to come.

The costly workmanship and lavish expenditure bestowed by the Greeks on the images of their gods, are matters of wonder in our days, although even recent times, unhappily, are not completely free from a similar taint of superstitious extravagance. At what period the worship of idols was introduced, is impossible to ascertain; but there is every reason to believe that Idolatry was common after the Deluge; for the Sacred Scriptures inform us that the forefathers of Abraham, as also himself, were engaged in its practice. The Hebrews, who do not appear ever to have had a specific form of idolatry themselves, adopted the deities of other lands; thus, in Egypt they worshipped Egyptian deities; in Judea, those of the neighbouring nations. For example, the golden calf worshipped by the Israelites in the Desert, and the two calves set up by Jeroboam, were borrowed from the images they had found among the idolatrous nations against whom they had been warned. And it has been well observed, that the sin of the Israelites was not so much that of positive idolatry, as a desire to symbolize the invisible

Deity, whom their want of faith prevented them acknowledging in his mysterious and ineffable presence in the pillar of cloud by day, and of light by night.

In all these cases, however, as far as we are able to judge, the deities were representatives of the elements. From this elementary worship, the Greeks, in their refinement of art, adopted their beau-ideal of the human form in male or female strength and beauty: thus, the sun at Rhodes was personified under the form of Apollo, the constant and most celebrated example of manly elegance. Of these sculptured representations our galleries and museums afford abundant specimens.

Besides this mode of honouring their deities, the most splendid elaborations of architecture were devoted to the temples in which their gods were invoked; and among the more renowned were those to Jupiter and Diana. These temples and the idols were alike swept away by the besom of time, wielded by the violent hands of the Goth and the Vandal. The cross too, was, in the earlier ages of Christianity, elevated in these ruined temples; to this succeeded another age of darkness, and the crescent has long been reared in its stead; Mahometan misrule will perchance, ere long, give place again to that faith which must overspread the globe, when the march of mind and intellect shall enlighten these lands of gloom with the knowledge of that volume in which God shows that, in the clearest manifestation of his will-He would deal with us as rational and responsible creatures.

The refinement of the Greeks led them to improve on the vast mounds and pyramidal tombs of their predecessors, and they perpetuated the memory of the loved and honoured in life with costly fabrics in which

their ashes were entombed. The Mausoleum, from its excessive magnificence, as well as for its architectural beauty and sculptural adornment, became the first structure to give a proverbial name to superb monuments to the dead in after-ages.

Of the triumphal exploits of Alexander of Macedon, which now but

Point a moral and adorn a tale,

the name given to a city he founded at the mouth of the Nile, alone exists. The ruins of this once flourishing and magnificent city can now with difficulty be traced; and of the far-famed Pharos not one stone stands above another, but the site has become a point of interest, in rising from a slumber of ages to again become one of the great cities of transit on the highway of nations from the western to the eastern world. A modern Pharos, of smaller dimensions, certainly, has been erected on the opposite point; for wherever the march of commerce progresses, the prototypes of this first of lighthouses spread themselves on every coast, to guide the mariner to his destined haven.

The commercial spirit that leads the Anglo-Saxon race to penetrate the wilds of what we have been accustomed to term the New World, may light upon other buried cities of which written history gives no record. The astounding discoveries of gold deposits in different parts of the globe, and the abundant supplies of which are now being obtained, make us cease to wonder at the extensive use of gold by the ancient nations we have been led to notice in the course of this volume, and to believe as matters of fact things which have often heretofore been treated as fabulous exaggerations.