what region is there in which Jews are not found), again effect this, and yet more remarkably?

When Nebuchadnezzar became master of Tyre, he found, by means of the city which he had conquered, his influence suddenly extended Spain and Britain. Megasthenes, quoted in Josephus, speaks of him as having subdued Libya and Spain (Λιβυης την πολλην και Ιβηριαν)—but he does not appear to have actually governed these countries, nor to have valued the influence with which the commerce of Tyre, if it had been cultivated, would have invested him. But the fact that the first great king of Babylon had thus suddenly placed within his grasp, by means of commerce and the Hebrew language, an influence so extensive, defining, as it were, by the parts that it touched, the subsequent boundaries of the Roman earth, is in itself remarkable, and seems like an intended foreshadowing of what is yet to be.*

* See map, exhibiting the ancient diffusion of the Hebrew language through the Phoenician colonies-by Dr. TregellesPart III. of " Bible in every Land"-Bagster and Co. In note to page 2, Dr. Tregelles writes: "The Phoenician colonies acknowledged a certain dependence on Tyre; this was recognised by the offerings sent from Carthage, etc., to the altar of the Tyrian Hercules. The possession of Tyre may be considered as bestowing a kind of superiority over the colonies. How far this may be connected with actual power may be uncertain; nothing short of this appears to be recognised in the statements of Megasthenes with regard to the dominion of Nebuchad

Ancient Babylon never appears to have addicted itself to the pursuits of Tyre, nor to have used Tyre's mercantile energies in subserviency to itself. In the descriptions, therefore, that Scripture gives of Babylon's condition in times past, we do not find the features of Tyre. But in those descriptions of Babylon, which belong to a time yet to come, almost all the characteristics of Tyre are assigned to Babylon; so much so, that a great deal of the language employed in the Revelation respecting Babylon is drawn from the Old Testament prophecies respecting Tyre. It could scarcely be otherwise, if, in the latter day, Babylon and Tyre are to be drawn into the same circle of interests together. They will probably stand to each other in some such relation as Liverpool and London; the one being marked principally by the executive skill and energy of commerce-the other, in addition to that which is executive, having also the legislative and controlling power. In that case, of course, all the moral, and many other features of Tyre, would be found in Babylon, and the descriptions which belong to the subordinate city may well be applied to the mistress city whom she serves.

nezzar, whom he represents as having conquered and ruled, not merely Tyre, but also the whole line of Phoenician colonies, even as far as Spain. This has been treated as an exaggeration; but even if it be, there appears to be at least a fact on which it is based."

(D.)

ROME-A REVIVED CITY.

JERUSALEM, Babylon, and other cities of the East, are not the only places on which desolation has fallen from the hand of God. Other cities also have had premonitory blows; and of this Rome is a memorable instance. There was once a period when it had well nigh fallen into utter ruin and even now it is but a partially revived city, seated in the midst of former desolations.

Spalding states, that in the fifth century the population of Rome was a million, but that in the second half of the thirteenth century it had sunk to 35,000. He adds, "It is even asserted (though this is scarcely possible), that before the return of the Papal Court from Avignon, it amounted to no more than 17,000. The population rose in the fifteenth century. Under Leo X. it was rated at 80,000, and it increased uninterruptedly till the French invasion. Between 1700 and 1795 it had risen from 130,000 to about 170,000; but it is a curious fact, that the increase has been kept up, not by births within the city, which are usually equalled or exceeded by the number of deaths, but by a steady tide of emigration from the provinces.

... The French occupation, with its attendant calamities of slaughter, famine, and contagious disease, brought down the population to 115,000, which was the number in 1813. Since 1823 it has again steadily risen."-(" Spalding's Italy," vol. iii. p. 160.)

The last census makes the population about 180,000. The depopulation of Rome, in the Middle Ages, is fully borne out by Ranke, in his "History of the Popes." The lowest statement does not seem too low. He places the extreme depopulation at the return of Pope Eugenius IV. from Florence, where he had remained some years. This was about 1443. Rome was then little better than a collection of huts, inhabited by cow-herds. The formation of the present city of Rome is subsequent to the year 1500. It lies chiefly in the ancient Campus Martius, to the north-west of the ancient hills. As the walls of Aurelian still stand, the empty ground enclosed within them is considerable; in fact, within the walls, two-thirds of the space is ruin or desolation. The Palatine hill, the cradle of Rome, is now desolate, crowned with the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars, and having on it a villa or two and a monastery. The Aventine and the Cælian hills are as desolate as the Palatine; so too, in great measure, are the Esquiline and the Viminal; and thus modern Rome has quite withdrawn from three, at least, of the seven hills.

The dreariness and desolation by which Rome is surrounded for miles are just like that of a moor in Scotland or Cornwall-and this is the region where once the thirty Latin cities stood.

Rogers describes the Campagna as "still as night, and desolate; sulphurous vapours exhaling thence, as from a land accursed." The description of the desolation around Hillah scarcely exceeds this.

"I have been trying," says another writer, "since our return home, to understand the causes which led to the overthrow of the city of Rome. Gibbon assigns four; the injuries of time and natural causes the ravages of the northern barbarians— the use and abuse of the materials taken from its public buildings, and the repeated civil wars and internal discords of the noble Roman families during the Middle Ages. If to these we add the influence of the elements, we shall cease to feel surprised at the change in the appearance of the hills of Rome; the comparative mole-hill size of some, and the total disappearance of others." (Taylor's Letters, p. 149.)

Rome, therefore, is nothing more than a partially revived city, and has little title to appropriate the language either of the seventeenth or eighteenth of the Revelation, as one who sits a queen, and sees no sorrow.*

* The following are the words of Ranke, vol. iii. p. 480 :"During the absence of the Popes in Avignon, the Rome of