and
doing nothing to develop their resources. This selfish system was, like
most selfishness, short-sighted; it alienated those whom it would have
been true policy to conciliate and win. When the time of peril came, the
subject nations were no source of strength to the menaced empire, On
the contrary, it would seem that some even turned against her and made
common cause with the assailants.

Babylonian civilization differed in many respects from Assyrian, to
which however it approached more nearly than to any other known type.
Its advantages over Assyrian were in its greater originality, its
superior literary character, and its comparative width and flexibility.
Babylonia seems to have been the source from which Assyria drew her
learning, such as it was, her architecture, the main ideas of her
mimetic art, her religious notions, her legal forms, and a vast number
of her customs and usages. But Babylonia herself, so far as we know,
drew her stores from no foreign country. Hers was apparently the genius
which excogitated an alphabet--worked out the simpler problems
of arithmetic--invented implements for measuring the lapse of
time--conceived the idea of raising enormous structures with the poorest
of all materials, clay--discovered the art of polishing, boring, and
engraving gems--reproduced with truthfulness the outlines of human and
animal forms--attained to high perfection in textile fabrics--studied
with success the motions of the heavenly bodies--conceived of grammar
as a science--elaborated a system of law--saw the value of an exact
chronology--in almost every branch of science made a beginning, thus
rendering it comparatively easy for other nations to proceed with the
superstructure. To Babylonia, far more than to Egypt, we owe the art
and learning of the Greeks. It was from the East, not from Egypt,
that Greece derived her architecture, her sculpture, her science, her
philosophy, her mathematical knowledge--in a word, her intellectual
life. And Babylon was the source to which the entire stream of Eastern
civilization may be traced. It is scarcely too much to say that, but
for Babylon, real civilization might not even yet have dawned upon the
earth. Mankind might never have advanced beyond that spurious and
false form of it which in Egypt, India, China, Japan, Mexico, and Peru,
contented the aspirations of the species.

APPENDIX.

A. STANDARD INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

The Inscription begins