two hills on which the armies stood, entirely confined it on the right
and left. The valley is not above half a mile broad. Tradition was not
required to identify this spot. Nature has stamped it with everlasting
features of truth. The brook still flows through it in a winding course,
from which David took the smooth stones.'"


_The Willows of Babylon._

"In reference to the willow and the streams of Babylon, where the
Hebrews remembered Zion so mournfully, Sir Robert Ker Porter states,
that 'the banks of the Euphrates were hoary with reeds, and the grey
osier willows were yet there on which the captives of Israel hung their
harps,' and wept in the land of the stranger. The _salix babylonica_, or
the weeping willow, in its geographical range, sweeps through the plains
of Judea, and by the ruins of Babylon, from the verge of the
Mediterranean to the frontiers of Japan--a lovely line of beauty--the
Niobe of vegetation! Sad memorial of the mournful march of the captive
Hebrews. It is, we think, a very striking circumstance, that these
countries should even now retain such unchanged lineaments of their
ancient history. Time seems to linger, or move slowly on; as if the
wheels of nature stood still, and paused at the mournful sight of
departed grandeur and buried magnificence--BABYLON in ruins! 'MENE!--GOD
hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it!' Mr. Rich has given us a
sketch of a spade copied from a Babylonian brick found near El Kasr, and
detached from a mass of ruin, in all probability, on the very site of
Nebuchadnezzar's pensile gardens; and he remarks, that it is almost a
fac simile of the spade used at this very day in Chaldea."

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