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dom or by the scantiness and poverty of his

revenues. !

But were we to speak of the glory of Cyrus at all, we would apply the word to the honour of his being commissioned by God-not to overrun the continent of Asia, or to bind kings at his pleasure, or even to annihilate the tyranny of the most despotic,—but to say to the prisoners of hope, come forth, and to deliver the captivity of Judah. Not to the rapidity and number of his conquests, but to his moderation in the midst of victory. Not to the fact that he took the capital of Lydia by storm, but that he had compassion on the fallen greatness of her monarch. Not that he made himself master of mighty Babylon,-but that he treated her conquered nations with lenity, and founded the government of her innumerable provinces on the noble basis of justice.

In this view of the subject, therefore, we can afford no glory to the character of Semiramis, except so far as the works she erected at Babylon, and in other parts of her kingdom, were works of public utility, or tended to promote the

industry, and to provide for the maintenance of an overgrown population. While, of the son of Nabopolassar we would say, that in that one act alone, in which he disclaimed all glory to himself, do we recognise his true glory; and to Him alone, who is the King eternal and immortal, is this ascription ever due, whose dominion, whether he wields the sceptre of a thousand worlds, or reigns by the instrumentality of human agents among the nations of the earth, is an everlasting dominion, and whose kingdom is a kingdom of glory.

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"The spider weaves her web in the palace of Kesri, givt to "The owl stands sentinel upon the watch-tower of Afrasiab."

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Persian Poetry. inab

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Ir is one of the happy fruits of civilization in

Europe, that whatever may be the horrors and evils of war, slavery is no longer one of them. Among the nations of antiquity, whether we peruse the page of sacred or of profane history; the

* Kesra or Kesri is a style which seems to have been indiscriminately applied to the latter princes of the house of Sassan, and was probably derived from the Cæsar of the Romans.-Kinneir's Geographical Memoir of Persia, p. 254.

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traditions of classic poetry, or the rude rhymes of barbarian nations; we find, either expressed or implied, the experience or the dread of slavery. Either ye were bondmen in Egypt, or ye shall be servants to the Assyrian in Babylon,

The state of education in Europe has given such a tone to its literary taste, that we do not » wonder at the fact, that the beauties of classic poetry are over-rated, or that men should see in...... them so much to admire and to applaud. Their must beautiful passages, however, are not only: infinitely surpassed by the poetry of the Scriptures, but there is in the prophets very frequently a train. of sentiment so similar, that nothing but the com mon state of society in the earlier ages of the !! world, can account for the coincidence. T

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Thus, when the Trojan hero contemplates the event of the war, and the destruction of Ilium,10 the prospect of the captivity of his beloved An- ̧ì dromaché is the most painful circumstance in 23 his view. In his mind's eye he pictures her in at state of slavery, designing in að paramoul

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or still more abject and deragded, hetviews: the wife of Hector bearing on her shoulders, chake

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In like manner when Babylon is addressed by the prophet as a delicate female, accustomed to all the elegancies and refinements of a luxurious life, he calls upon her, without any of the pensive or relenting feelings which characterize the pain'{ ful apprehensions of the Trojan, to prepare foris the degradation which awaits her as a slave ton "Come down, and sit in the dust, O (virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground there isad no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans, for o thou shalt no more be called tender and deliom cate! Take the millstones and grind meal, wow uncover the locks, make bare the knee, pass over the rivers,sitesileht, get into darkness, 79 for thou shalt no more be called the lady of madı tions."*Whether Cyrus made this use of his viceb tory for not, we cannot pretend to determinevit seems, however, to have belonged to the right af

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Isaiah xlvii. 1.

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