seem palpable contradictions. But now let
her understand that out of the Assyrian empire split off three separate
kingdoms, of which one was called the Assyrian, not empire, but kingdom;
there lurks the secret of the error. And to this kingdom of Assyria it
was that Sennacherib belonged. Or, in order to represent by a sensible
image this derivation of kingdoms from the stock of the old
superannuated Assyrian empire (to which belonged Nimrod, Ninus, and
Semiramis--those mighty phantoms, with their incredible armies); let her
figure to herself some vast river, like the Nile or the Ganges, with the
form assumed by its mouths. Often it will happen, where such a river is
not hemmed in between rocks, or confined to the bed of a particular
valley, that, perhaps, a hundred or two of miles before reaching the
sea, upon coming into a soft, alluvial soil, it will force several
different channels for itself. As these must make angles to each other,
in order to form different roads, the land towards the disemboguing of
the river will take the arrangement of a triangle. And as that happens
to be the form of a Greek capital D (in the Greek alphabet called
Delta), it has been usual to call such an arrangement of a great river's
mouth a Delta.

Now, then, let her think of the Assyrian empire under the notion of the
Nile, descending from far distant regions, and from fountains that were
concealed for ages, if even now discovered. Then, when it approaches
the sea, and splits up its streams, so as to form a Delta, let her
regard that Delta as the final state of the Assyrian power, the kingdom
state lasting for about two centuries until swallowed up altogether, and
remoulded into unity by the Persian empire.

The Delta, therefore, or the Nile dividing into three streams, will
represent the three kingdoms formed out of the ruins of the Assyrian
empire, when falling to pieces by the death of Sardanapalus. One of
these three kingdoms is often called the Median; one the Chaldaean; and
the third is called the Assyrian kingdom. But the most rememberable
shape in which they can be recalled is, perhaps, by the names of their
capitals. The capital cities were as follows: of the first, _Ecbatana_,
which is the modern _Hamadan_; of the second, _Babylon_, on the
Euphrates, of which the ruins have been fully ascertained in our own
times; at present, nothing remains _but_ ruins, and these ruins are
dangerous to visit, both from human marauders prowling