who go, or are sent, to the universities are not in earnest. Most of them require pressure to make them do anything. There must be some fixed course for them, otherwise liberal education would not be even so general as it is. But it is well, I think, to have at least one such college, where professors may be free to develop their views, and to adopt their own plans of training; and where youths, who have a real thirst for knowledge, may follow out fully their favourite studies, under the guidance of teachers as independent and as enthusiastic as themselves. Rigid rules would only cramp such minds. The prospective requirements of an Examining Board would only quench their ardour, and take from them that freedom of thought and originality of conception which always characterize genius. The attempt to press the entire higher culture of a nation into one uniform mould, is just in so far an attempt to dwarf the nation's intellect, and reduce it to a miserable mediocrity. Freedom is an essential condition of that profound and persevering research which alone can achieve discoveries such as those of Newton in England, Laplace in France, Thompson in Scotland, and Henry in America. The students of the University of Virginia are all resident. Their chambers are intermingled with the houses of the professors. The college thus forms a distinct community, complete within itself; and provision must, therefore, be made for the religious and moral as well as the mental training of the students. This is not so necessary in those places where they only go to the college for lectures; for then they may have the advantage of home discipline, and of such religious instruction and moral guidance as their parents or guardians may provide. Here, however, there is a chaplain, who, strangely enough, is chosen alternately biennially from the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist bodies. This may seem strange to us, but it works well, and its general tendency seems to be to foster a spirit of charity and Christian forbearance among the young men. In regard to religion, there is perfect freedom, as there is in study. The college is unsectarian. The conscientious convictions and scruples of every man are respected; and while there is regular morning prayer and Sunday service, no one is compelled to attend on one or other. Yet, as a rule, most of the students do attend. The professors set a good example in this as in other respects, and the pupils are not slow to follow. One thing I noticed with much pleasure while attending in the lecture-rooms. The professors are not afraid to touch, whenever occasion requires it, upon the fundamental truths of revelation. They are careful not to intrude them unnecessarily; but they mention them, examine them, and defend them, just as they do other truths. They are recognized and dealt with as constituent and necessary parts of a liberal education. Jewish history is considered as important as Grecian history; the laws of Moses are thought not less worthy of study than those of Lycurgus and Solon. This is just as it should be. Young men, while being informed regarding the mythology of Greece and Rome, are not left in entire ignorance of the theology of the Bible; while the ethical and philosophical systems of Kant and Cousin and Berkeley are investigated, the system of the New Testament is not ignored. Creeds and confessions are, of course, excluded from the class-room. There is no Faculty of Theology; and there is no systematic training in any department of religion. The professors, as I found, draw a wise and logical distinction between two things which are often confounded, and the confounding of which leads, in my opinion, to great confusion of thought, and sometimes to serious practical difficulties. They distinguish between that mode of instruction which tries, or tends, to force upon the mind peculiar views on controverted points in theology, philosophy, or history; and that mode which contents itself with showing clearly and simply what opinions have been held by opposite parties on those disputed and delicate points. The former method is an unwarranted interference with free thought and the rights of conscience; the latter is a legitimate and, indeed, a necessary branch of education. Some may think it dangerous; but the real danger, in my opinion, lies in the action of false views and arguments upon crude and ill-trained minds; and the true mode of counteracting that danger is thorough mental training, and a full exhibition and comparison of truth and error. Truth will ever prevail in the cultivated intellect. I was told that more than a half of the four hundred and fifty students who are in attendance upon the University are members of "The Young Men's Christian Association." Soon after my arrival, I was waited upon by a deputation from their managing committee, and requested to lecture upon Palestine. I gladly consented; but as my stay could not be prolonged, they were obliged to fix the following evening for its delivery. Yet, though the notice was so short, the large college chapel was filled. The unflagging attention of the students during the lecture was exceedingly gratifying. The points brought out were mainly illustrative of Scripture history and fulfilled prophecy; and I was pleased to find a large and eager group of young men waiting for me at the close, and desirous of obtaining fuller information in regard to some subjects I had touched upon. Their thirst for knowledge impressed me deeply. They are manifestly in earnest in all they do. The acquisition of knowledge is their first and chief aim. They have their games and societies, as in other colleges; but these are systematically kept in the background. In bidding farewell to the University of Virginia, I felt that I was leaving behind me a body of professors who would reflect honour upon any seat of learning in the world; and a body of young men, many of whom are destined to occupy proud positions in their country. The late war formed a sad but noble episode in the history of the University. The whole of the students, and those professors whose age did not disqualify them, entered the Southern army, and were distinguished for valour and enthusiasm. I glanced over a large volume, containing a series of brief but interesting memorials of those who fell in battle or died of their wounds. The list is a long one, and many of its details are deeply interesting. Some of the survivors-and among them my kind host, Professor Gildersleeve-still bear the marks of that terrible campaign. War is a fearful scourge; but perhaps nowhere are its dread effects so plainly seen as when it breaks up a whole educational institution, and sends hundreds of young men―the very flower of their country-to an early and a bloody tomb. I took leave of my kind friends on Saturday afternoon, with feelings such as I have rarely experienced in parting with strangers. Professor Gildersleeve accompanied me to the station at Charlottesville, and his affectionate adieu almost brought tears to my eyes. THE COMING OF SPRING. BY ANNIE LUCAS. T comes-it comes-with a gush of song And the dance of light on the stream's glad breast! It comes-it comes-and the light winds bring It comes with its glancing light and shade, It comes-it comes-with the cuckoo's note, With the rainbow's arch, with the shower's bright fall, And a flush of light round the homes of all. It comes-to beauty and life and bloom It comes glad hearts to its voice bound high, Oh! all too bright is the laughing sky, Yes; a morn shall rise upon death's long night, THE WITNESS OF THE MONUMENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE FROM ORIENTAL REMAINS. BY THOMAS T. GRAY, M.A. II. "And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven."-GEN. xi. 3, 4. HE progress of modern investigation has elicited some remarkable facts illustrative of the statements of Scripture in regard to the structure of the Tower of Babel. Nothing, indeed, has been done to prove in a satisfactory way the exact spot which that tower actually occupied. Many ingenious theories have been started, with a view to identify the ancient site with one or other of the great ruined mounds which mark the whole extent of the valley of the Euphrates; but no explanation has yet been offered which is not burdened with almost insuperable difficulties. Yet while nothing can be gained by fanciful identifications, which the next wave of speculation or discovery may sweep into the land of forgetfulness, there is a good deal to be gathered from the various scattered side-lights which the researches of travellers have thrown, first, on the probable form of the tower; and second, on the materials used in its construction. I. The external form of the building. A vast quantity of evidence can be adduced to prove that the sacred edifices of the early Chaldæans and later Babylonians were built in the form of a tower. The ziggurat, or temple-tower, was not only a prominent feature in the landscape of Mesopotamia, but formed a characteristic peculiarity of the ecclesiastical architecture of the country. It consisted of a succession of stories, built on an elevated platform, and rising sometimes as high as one hundred and fifty feet. All the ruins of temples which have been uncovered in recent times are distinguished, some with greater, others with less distinctness, according to their respective antiquity, by this custom of building in stages. The best surviving specimen of the earliest buildings has been found in the ruins of Mugheir, situated on the right | bank of the Euphrates, at a distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles from the head of the Persian Gulf, and believed on good grounds to be identical with Ur of the Chaldees. The explorations there made have revealed the existence of a large building of two stories, built in the form of a parallelogram, and placed on a mound twenty feet in height. The first story of the temple was found on examination to have been partly destroyed by time, and partly covered with rubbish, and is calculated to have been about forty feet in height. The larger portion of the structure is composed of common sun-dried bricks of small size, and cased on the outside with a covering wall of burnt bricks, which, like the others, are laid in bitumen. This lower story is connected with the platform on which it rests by a staircase nine feet wide, placed on the north-east side of the building. The height of the second story is about nineteen feet, and its materials are similar in character and arrangement to those found in the first stage. The Arabs of the vicinity informed the traveller who examined the structure, that there existed, less than half a century ago, a third story of small dimensions, in the form of a chamber, set apart as a shrine or sanctuary in honour of the particular divinity worshipped in the temple. With the exception, however, of some enamelled bricks found among the fallen rubbish of the second story, and entirely differing in appearance from the bricks used in the rest of the building, all traces of this third story had disappeared. But even though we discard these fragments of a third story as insufficient to prove its existence, we possess, in the existing stages and the platform, which was itself twenty feet high, an adequate illustration of the primitive tendency of the Chaldæan architects to construct their great buildings in the form of towers. It is true that the materials of the second stage belong to a later period than those of the first, the bricks of which | long since perished, there can be no good ground it is composed bearing the stamp of a king of more for doubting the general accuracy of the hisrecent times. This fact would tell seriously torian's statement, who is believed to have visited against the antiquity of the second stage, but for Babylon in the course of his travels, and obtained the discovery which has been made among these his information on the spot. later bricks of a quantity of others belonging to the same period as those of the first story. This discovery is regarded by the most competent authorities as "sufficient to show that the two stories are part of the original design, and therefore that the idea of building in stages belongs to the most primitive times." Some idea of the antiquity of the temple of Mugheir may be gathered from the fact that the early bricks of which it is mainly composed bear the name of a king called Urukh, who, according to the evidence of the monuments, ruled over Chaldæa about the year 2000 B.C. The special form of construction, of which Mugheir may be taken as a specimen, was not confined to the earliest times, but characterized the country through all the varying phases of its political history. The sculptures unite with the actually existing ruins in affording illustrations of the same feature in Assyrian and Babylonian architecture. On a sculptured bas-relief discovered in the vicinity of Nineveh, the outline of a temple with four stages is distinctly portrayed; whilst a tower-shaped mound laid open at Khorsabad was found, on examination by a French explorer, to possess as many as seven stories. That this number need not of itself be regarded as by any means exaggerated, may be shown by reference to the great Temple of Belus at Babylon, which Herodotus numbered among the wonders of the ancient world. The celebrated passage in the first book of his history, in which that writer describes the grandeurs of Babylon, contains the following account of the tower :-" In the middle of the precinct [of Jupiter Belus] there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers......On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, with a golden table by its side." Though the structure thus described has But by far the most remarkable illustration of the Chaldæan system of tower-building has been furnished within the last few years, by the discovery of the splendid Temple of the Seven Spheres, which, in the completeness of its parts and the imposing grandeur of its appearance, eclipses all other remains of the same class. The ruins of the Temple of Birs-Nimrud, as they are now designated, lie at a distance of eight or nine miles from the site of ancient Babylon, and, rising abruptly from the plain to a height of one hundred and fifty feet, are distinctly visible from a vast distance. The original building has gradually fallen into the form of a pyramid, the lower portion being overlaid with heaps of crumbling rubbish, which have slipped down and left a good many feet of brickwork exposed at the top. When closely surveyed by experts, it was found to be an almost perfect specimen of the ancient Chaldæan temple erected on the usual platform of crude brick, and consisting of an ascending series of seven stages, each built in the form of a square. The lowest story was two hundred and seventy-two feet square, the second two hundred and thirty, and so on; the stories gradually diminishing towards the top, till the dimensions of the seventh measured only twenty feet square. "These seven stages," says Professor Rawlinson, 66 I were coloured so as to represent the seven planetary spheres, according to the tints regarded by the Sabæans as appropriate to the seven luminaries: the basement stage being black, the hue assigned to Saturn; the next an orange or raw sienna tint, the hue of Jupiter; the third a bright red, the hue of Mars; the fourth golden, the hue of the Sun; the fifth a pale yellow, the hue of Venus; the sixth dark blue, the hue of Mercury; and the seventh silver, the hue of the Moon." The Birs-Nimrud was dedicated to Nebo, or Mercury, and had originally been built by one of the early kings. But having fallen into disrepair, it was restored by Nebuchadnezzar to the condition in which it has been preserved comparatively perfect down to the present time. Several laboured attempts have been made to prove its identity with the Tower of Babel; but the great distance of the Birs from the ruins of Babylon, and other obstacles of an equally serious kind, have been urged against the adoption of this view. In such circumstances, it it will be always hazardous to attempt to prove more than the facts of the case will fairly bear; and it would seem to be the wisest course to limit ourselves to the office of collecting such manifest and reasonable probabilities as the nature of the case suggests. The very antiquity of the event recorded in Genesis might of itself suffice to deter the incautious theorist from endeavouring to establish a clear and continuous chain of proofs, many links of which must have long since perished beyond hope of recovery. Confining our attention, then, to the region of coincidence, we possess, in these unburied mounds of the Valley of the Euphrates, the strongest antecedent probability of the existence of such a tower as is described in Holy Writ. The various remains of the sacred edifices of the country, belonging to all periods of its history, stand forth in silent majesty as witnesses to the truth of Scripture, in so far as regards the broad fact that towerbuilding was the natural practice followed in their great structures by the builders of the plain of Shinar; so much so, that had any other form of building but this been mentioned by the sacred writer, such a statement would have run counter to the whole body of evidence with which existing remains furnish us on the subject. That the evidence, on the other hand, should actually | run in a parallel and unbroken line with the statements of the Mosaic record, is a coincidence amounting, as nearly as could be expected in the circumstances, to the value of positive proof. 1 ancient builders use brick? "Why not stone?" For the simple yet sufficient reason, we reply, that there was no stone to be had. It is a fact notorious to all who have given attention to the subject of the natural resources of Babylonia, that the country is so signally destitute of minerals, and especially of stone, that there is not a single quarry to be found throughout its whole extent. The nature of the soil, which is rich and clayey, and the absence of rocks and hills, sufficiently account for a peculiarity which has left its own mark on the architecture of the country. As a consequence of this deficiency in mineral products, it has been satisfactorily proved that stone was never used for ordinary building purposes by the Chaldæans and Babylonians; and when on rare occasions it was actually employed for other purposes, it had to be brought from a distance. Sandstone was occasionally imported from Arabia, and basalt could also be procured; but the difficulty of transporting stone in sufficient quantities seems to have always materially interposed as an obstacle to its general use. The positive evidence furnished by existing remains fully bears out this view. It is a simple matter of fact that all the great buildings already explored are composed almost entirely of brick, and show comparatively few traces of stone. The huge temples of Warka and Mugheir, the massive walls and palaces of Babylon, the private dwellings, the vaulted tombs and ingenious drainage system of the great cemeteries, are all composed of the favourite material. Brick is visible everywhere; while, with the single exception of the ancient temple at Abu-Shahrein, in which an outer wall of limestone and a marble staircase have been found, stone is nowhere to be seen. Assyria, which lay on the upland to the north II. The materials used in the construction of of Babylonia, and was closely begirt on the north the Tower. The impression thus formed of the truth of the Scripture history as to the form of the Tower is confirmed in a singularly striking manner by an examination of the materials of which it is said to have been constructed. These materials consisted, according to the sacred text, of burned bricks laid in slime. Here we are met at the very outset with the question, which suggests itself even to the least thoughtful mind, "Why did these and east by high mountain ranges, was very differently situated in this respect. The mineral wealth of that country, which abounds in sandstone, limestone, alabaster, basalt, and marble, would at once recommend building in stone as the most natural course for its artificers to follow. But as there was no such supply of building materials in the Lower Valley, the architects were obliged to dispense with them, and resort to the substitute with which nature had provided them in all but |