It was a mighty step in the art of building when trees were smoothed into posts and placed in a rectangular form, with a covering or roof over them. Simple as this invention now appears, the inventor ought to have been "known to fame," for houses have continued nearly of the same form ever since. The most splendid Grecian temple is only an ornamented copy of the oblong house with its upright posts.

Log cabins were used, thousands of years before they were built by American backwoodsmen.

In the rude navigation of savages, the advance from paddles and oars to sails, was not greater than this stride from wigwams and mud huts, to a regular log house.

The employment of stones for buildings, was another important onward step in the art. The want of stones in some places, and the difficulty of shaping

them into the forms desired, led to the manufacture of bricks, by reducing a mass of clay to a regular form, and hardening it in the sun, or burning it with fire. A convenient and enduring material was thus obtained, which has continued to be used ever since. From the only authentic record of this period-the Bible —we learn, that the city and tower of Babel were built of brick. The ambitious daring of some mighty leader projected this tower.

"Go to," said he, "let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

This presumptuous undertaking was arrested, after the walls had been raised to a great height, by one of the most striking miracles recorded in Holy Writ.

"Among the builders, each to other calls,
Not understood, till hoarse and all in rage;
. . Thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named."

BABYLON.

It is supposed that the City of Babylon and the Temple of Belus afterwards occupied the same site as the Tower of Babel upon the plains of Shinar, between

the rivers Euphrates and Tigris.

It was founded

B.C. 2000, by Nimrod, and was rebuilt by Semiramis, B.C. 1200. Strengthened and beautified by succeeding sovereigns, it became one of the wonders of the world. Walls, three hundred and sixty feet high, eighty-seven feet in thickness, and sixty miles in length, surrounded this city. We are apt to be somewhat incredulous about these measurements, yet, when so many stupendous monuments remain, to demonstrate the power and skill of ancient nations, we know not where to fix the bounds of our belief.

Eastern writers, in their usual hyperbolical manner, describe the Temple of Belus, as twelve miles high, while St. Jerome more moderately asserts that it was only four miles in height! The geographer Strabo, who may perhaps be relied on, says it was six hundred and sixty feet high.

The city was laid out in regular squares, the streets of fifteen miles in length crossing each other at right angles. Its hundred gates of brass opened at the end of these streets. The hanging gardens of "the golden city" gave it the beauty of Paradise. But prophecy had spoken its doom, and Babylon the Great fell never to rise again. Travellers, as they wander over the desolate ruins, startle "the mole and the bat" from the prostrate temples of idolatry. The site of this stupendous city has been identified, and confirmation thus added to the truth of prophecy. Sir Robert Ker Porter, who visited these ruins, gives the following

account of the present condition of the Temple of Belus:-"It is an immense pile of ruins; at its base it measures 3082 feet in circuit; it presents two stages, the first about sixty feet high, cloven into a deep ravine by the rain, and intersected by the furrows of ages; the second ascent is about two hundred feet; from thence to the top thirty-five feet. On the western side, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in one stupendous, though irregular pyramidal hill, broken in the slopes of its sweeping acclivities by time and violence. On the north side there are large piles of ruins of fine and solid brickwork, projecting from among immense masses of rubbish at the base. The remains of the masonry are furnace-burnt bricks, united by a calcareous cement. The base of the structure was not altered, but the piles of fine bricks thrown down were vitrified with the various colours. The consuming power appears to have acted from above, and the scattered ruins fell from a higher point than the summit of the present standing fragment. The heat of the fire which produced such amazing effects must have burned with the force of the strongest furnace. I should be inclined to attribute the catastrophe to lightning from heaven."

NINEVEH.

Nineveh, the splendid capital of the Assyrian Empire, was sixty miles in circuit, and surrounded by high walls.

Recent discoveries have been made on the site of this ancient city, which promise to open a new volume of historical facts. A traveller thus writes to his friend in America:

"The principal mound (of these lately discovered ruins) is very large, being about sixteen hundred feet in length. My first excavation brought me on walls with inscriptions of the cuneiform character. I soon found that I had got into a palace that had been buried for many centuries. I have cleared out several rooms, the walls of which are covered with figures. They are religious and historical. The former, the lion with the head of a man and the wings of a bird; the bull with similar head and the wings of the eagle. The historical subjects are chiefly interesting for the insight they afford into the manners and customs of the ancient Assyrians, their mode of warfare, the state of the arts, &c. From an examination of them, there results a conviction that this people had risen to the greatest power; that they were highly civilized, and had attained a very remarkable proficiency in the fine arts."

The traveller who has made these interesting and invaluable discoveries, inclines to the opinion that the Greeks received their first knowledge of the arts from the Assyrians, instead of the Egyptians. There is, he thinks, more similarity between these remains of Ninehvite art and the Grecian, than between the Grecian and the Egyptian.