hands, in the person of Esarhaddon, Medid became an independent power. More successful in the west, the remaining Hebrew kingdom was таvaged, and the unworthy successor of Hezekiah was taken to repent of his vices in a foreign dungeon; and Esarhaddon, the Sargon of Isaiah, pursued a victorious career to the cataracts of the Nile. But the prophets, who had successively anticipated the gigantic strides of the first great Asiatic monarchy, and expressed in their magnificent odes the adverse fortunes of their own country from its absorbing ambition, with the wreck of the neighbouring states, were now inspired

to announce the end of the drama of Assyrian predominance, and reveal in funeral elegiacs the fate of the capital. The time of full accomplishment was not yet, but the axe had been laid to the root of the tree, and the trunk tottered.

Nahum, whose prophecy ranks among the finest specimens of the bold poetry of the Hebrews, was the first to open the burden of Nineveh. He makes no direct mention of his own era, but internal evidence places it after the subversion of Israel, and the transport of its tribes

the site of Nineveh, which local tradition regards as the scene of his birth and burial, and where his supposed tomb is now, a place of pilgrimage to the Jews.* In the sublime effusion of Nahum, a bold denunciation of the capital occurs, for the aspiring temper of its rulers, and the idolatries of its inhabitants, with the certainty of retribution.

"Woe to the city of blood!

She is all full of falsehood and of violence;
The prey departeth not;

A sound of the whip is there, and a sound of the rattling wheels

And of the prancing horses, and of the bounding chariots, and of the horsemen mounting.

7

The flame of the sword is also there, and the lightning of the spear;

And a multitude of slain, and a heap of dead

bodies;

And there is no end to the carcases;
They stumble upon their carcases.
Because of the many whoredoms of the hárlot,
Who is well favoured, and mistress of enchant-

ments,

Who trafficketh in nations by her whoredoms,
And in tribes by her enchantments;
Behold I am against thee, saith Jehovah of hosts,
And I will uncover thy skirts before thy face;
And I will show the nations thy nakedness, and
the kingdoms thy shame.

And I will cast upon thee abominable filth;
And I will dishonour thee, and make thee as
dung.

And it shall come to pass, every one that seeth thee shall flee from thee;

And shall say, Nineveh is laid waste.
Who will bemoan thee?

Whence shall I seek comforters for thee?"
Nah. iii. 1-8.

Zephaniah, at a later period, took up the theme, and formally proclaimed the reduction of the city to a complete desolation.

The annals of the Old Testament take no cognizance of the Assyrian history during its closing period, or from the reign of Esarhaddon, when Manasseh was taken captive B. c. 674, to the overthrow of the monarchy B. C. 606. Profane authorities, writing considerably after the events, have handed down the tale of abused expiring greatness; and though the narration is given in a discordant manner, general outline of the circumstances may be drawn, and their coherence

a

with inspired prediction be clearly discerned. Media becoming an independent power, soon became antagonistie; and the kings of Ecbatana contended for the prize of Asiatic dominion with those of Nineveh. The assailants were at first disastrously foiled, but the satrap of Babylon throwing off the Assyrian yoke (commencing then the empire of Nebuchadnezzar) coalesced with the Medes under Cyaxeres, and succeeded in humbling their former lords. Sardanapalus, the last sovereign, is simply mentioned by Herodotus in connection with a curious anecdote:- Some robbers, wishing to plunder the royal treasury, a subterranean apartment beneath the palace, mined their way to it underground at night, conveying the excavated earth away, and casting it into the Tigris, till their purpose was accomplished. In the pages of later writers, this prince figures as one of the most abandoned voluptuaries, thoroughly effeminated by his vices, yet with some inconsistence he is made to struggle gallantly for his th: one when the crisis of the kingdom comes.† Flushed by successes at the onset of the strife, the king betook himself to indulgence in his camp, regaled his soldiers with wine, upon which the Medes, hearing of their intemperance and confidence, resolved upon a night

surprise, routed the army with great slaughter, and compelled the survivors to retreat to the capital. "While they be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry." (Nah. i. 10.)

For a few years the final bursting of the storm was delayed. The Medes broke up from before the city to meet the Scythic invasion of their own territory, and were afterwards engaged in war with Lydia, during which the great solar eclipse occurred, arresting the battle on the banks of the Halys, the troops being terrified by the phenomenon. At length, "he that dasheth in pieces" the confederate forces of Media and Babylon, beleagured Nineveh, which made vigorous but vain preparations for defence; "guard the fenced place; watch the way, strengthen the loins, confirm might greatly," (Nah. ii. 1). An ancient prophecy, to the effect that it could never be taken by force till the river became its enemy, encouraged the hopes of the people, deeming the event most improbable; but swollen by the autumnal rains, or by the melting of the snows on the Armenian mountains in spring, the Tigris rose in inundation, and swept away twenty furlongs of the city-wall:—“ With an overrunning flood, he will make an utter end of the

place thereof" "The gates of the rivers shall be opened," (Nah. i. 8-11, 6). The disaster of such evil augury owing to the legend, paralysed the inhabitants, who gave up all for lost "the palace melteth (with fear;") thy people are as women in the midst of thee." Sardanapulus, in despair, perished in the voluntary conflagration of the imperial residence "there shall the fire devour thee." The Assyrian territory was divided between the conquerors, and the treasures of the city-"they spoil the silver, they spoil the gold, and there is no end of the glorious store." Zephaniah's tragic picture was speedily realised:

All the beasts of the earth. Both the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the carved lintels.

A cry shall resound in the window; the raven shall be in the porch;

For he hath laid bare her cedar work.

This is the rejoicing city, that sat in security; That said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me.

How is she become a destruction!
A place for beasts to dwell in !"

(Zeph. ii. 13, 14, 15.)Such are the memories of Nineveh! Its story, exhibited in the Jewish annals, speaks of mercy and judgment; and now on the roll of human events, we have the sparing and catastrophe of the city permanently registered, to serve as beacon lights to nations and individuals through all ages of time, revealing the benevolence of the Divine administration to transgressors submitting to the righteousness of

And will destroy Assyria;

And will make Nineveh a desolation,

Even a dry place as the desert.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her;

bleness of a retribution if an impious course is preferred,

AN association has recently been formed at London, under the above name, which we think deserves the attention of the public. We shall perhaps give below some passages from the address, in which the motives of the founders are made known. Our object at present is only to express a few thoughts respecting its dominant idea, and its bearing on those moral wants which we also consider really to exist, and to demand satisfaction. How far the "International League" will afford that satisfaction no one can say at the present time. Every thing depends upon its march, upon the zeal, the conscientiousness, the activity, the honourable calmness, with which the managing committee shall fulfil their duties. These are grave-grave from the vastness of the task, and from the consequences that may follow any error, however involuntarily committed-any exaggeration in the statement of facts any unnecessary harshness of language any misunderstanding of the

national questions that are agitated in Europe, or of the special position which England occupies with regard to them." The Association is but at its first step, and it is evident we must see it at work some time before we can judge it. Its object alone is within our present scope.

"To enlighten the British public as to the political condition and relations of foreign countries; to disseminate the principles of national freedom and progress; to embody and manifest an efficient public opinion in favour of the right of every people to self-government and the maintenance of their own nationality; to promote a good understanding between the peoples of every country." Such is the object of "the League," as it is explained in the few lines that preface the address. This object is good. It is more we think it is opportune; for it only embodies the general tendencies of the European movement for more than half a century.

There has always been, from the

earliest historical times-for those who can read in history something more than accounts of battles and biographical dates of princes and kings-there has always existed a tendency to an ever closer and more extended association between the different groups that compose the human race. By wars as well as in peaceful times, by alliances as well as by invasions, the providential thought which rules the collective march of societies, and which tends to draw them closer together, has always triumphed; and when we see the civilization concentrated on some culminating points of humanity, as, for instance, on Greece and Rome, suddenly disappear, we are sure to find it again in the next page of the history of the world, less intense, it is true, but more widely extended-embracing in its embracing in its light a broader terrestrial zone, and uniting, by a certain balance of powers, conquerors and conquered, destroyers and victims. This tendency, which successive generations have ever followed unconsciously, sometimes unwillingly, has in the last fifty years acquired a regular, progressive, explicit development - it has acquired the knowledge of itself. Already, in the second half of the last century, philosophy had given the signal. In 1785, Lessing proclaimed the great and profound thought, that the human race is a collective being-having a unity of life, and from one epoch to another progressing in its education, in accomplishment of a providential plan; and this point of view speedily became that of all historical and literary studies. Men began to estimate the action and importance of the parts from a lofty view of the whole. The visible or latent influence of one people upon another was more and more recognised. A European literature rose above all the national literatures; to it, much more than to the exclusively national tendencies, belonged almost all the great poets and writers of the latter period. Translations and surveys of foreign literatures became numerous. And what literature, less fettered by separate interests, rapidly effected for the communion of intellectual products and the formation of a European com

mon sense, political economy came also to accomplish, though with far greater difficulties to contend with, in the sphere of material products. The idea that Europe, the earth itself, was one vast common market, in which no one member could suffer or be fettered in developing his powers without inconvenience to the others, became the soul of a whole school who preached with zeal in Italy, in France, in England, every where, the throwing down of all barriers opposed to the interchange of the agricultural and manufactured produce of countries, freedom of trade between nations, and its facilitation by a system of ways, whether by sea, by river, or by land, destined to draw together and unite the nations. The most significant facts came to verify the tendency, of which literature and economy had become the expression.. Not an event of any importance took place among one people, that its echoes were not immediately heard in others; not a single revolution was accomplished that was not looked upon as a threat, or hailed as a hope, by all Europe. A flag of principles by degrees overtopped the flag, hitherto alone, of local interests. It was-it is visible that Europe is marching-by the common consent of her populations-towards a new era of union, of more intimate association, in which, under the influence of one general thought, the people will at last look on one another as members of one great family-as bound in duty and interested each to assist in the development and progress of the others-as labourers in the great workshop of nature, distributed according to their position, their special aptitude or their vocation, but all contributing to one work, whose fruits are to enlarge and strengthen the life of all.

In face of this common tendency, so clearly established that it has forced the absolute governments to overcome all their mutual hatred and jealousies, and form an alliance to endeavour to combat it-in face of a Europe, feeling itself so united that not an idea can anywhere emerge without thousands of interpreters seeking to render it popular every where else; so united in interest that no rise or fall can take place at

London or Paris without the shock being felt at Vienna, at Genoa, at Amsterdam, at Hamburgh; so united in sympathy that an attempt of the Poles cannot take place without the cry of "Long live Poland!" resounding at once in London, in Paris, in Madrid, and in the cities of Romagna-the part of the official policy of governments has not changed, it has remained, by we know not what contradiction, the same that it was a hundred years ago. If governments have sometimes appeared for an instant to quit the old path; it has only been by a forced concession to acknowledge some accomplished fact produced by the tendency we are recording; immediately afterwards they have sunk back into their old rut. One would say that, for diplomatists, the world has stood still since the treaty of Westphalia. Now, as then, policy is founded exclusively upon interests; principles have nothing to do with it. These interests having nothing superior to harmonize them, are implicitly looked upon as hostile between state and state; only, as the possibility of wars, of conquest, of aggrandizement, is more and more remote, they content themselves with watching one another, or with injuring one another by, tariff regulations. Now, as at the time of the treaty of Westphalia, the great problem of statesmen is that of the balance of power— how to prevent one power or another from acquiring too great a preponderance-how to force to inaction. They do not act, they resist. Governments -and here we speak of the best-do not even suspect that it may be their duty to support, to direct, to realize by degrees the general tendencies of Europe. The thought that these tendencies are the inspiration of God on this world, and that governments exist only to be their interpreters and servants, has remained entirely foreign to them.

There exist in Europe, at the present day, but two policies-that of the absolute governments, that reacts against the advancing movement, which bears the people along; and that of the constitutional governments, which do not act at all a retrograde policy, and a policy of isolation, of inertia, of neutrality, as it is called-the policy of Herod

and that of Pilate—of evil and of egotism.

The foreign policy of England evidently belongs to the principle of isolation. In 1823, when the dispute between progress and retrograde tyranny, between the spirit of national liberties and the usurpation of brute force, was already kindled on almost every point of Europe, George Canning summed it up in these words—“ Our station is essentially neutral-neutral not only between contending nations, but between conflicting principles:" and he cited with complacency the well-known lines,

Celsa sedet Oolus arce
Sceptra tenens, &c.

In his system England should, while preserving a sublime indifference between the two principles, make herself feared as a mighty adversary, or hoped for as a powerful friend; but she should never realize the hope or the fear— there was the secret of her power. Since then Europe has changed more and more; the struggle has been immensely extended; new elements-the Sclavonian element for instance-have appeared in the arena; great revolutions have taken place; continual battles have been and are being fought. England, not, thank God, her inhabitants, but her government, has remained impassible. Her policy has remained chained to Canning's formula: now, as then, she is neutral not only between contending nations, but between conflicting principles.

But these principles are justice and injustice, good and evil. On one side men fight for right, on the other they slaughter to oppress. Here is the voice of a whole nation protesting, there that of a single man bidding it be silent. Can you, without a crime, without remorse, remain indifferent between these two voices-between these two flags? What! shall we brand with infamy the individual who coolly allows the passenger to be murdered at the corner of the street, being able to prevent it; and shall we admire the conduct of a nation which, while men are every where beyond its frontiers dying for an idea, and tyrants murdering from unjust ambition, celsâ sedet in arce, and