tioned vase. He, not without much
research, interpreted it as a dedication "To the divine Sigo," a deity
whose name was found in Sigeum. The transmutation, however, seemed
forced; and, while Haug was right in his method, his results were
pronounced at best,

"Fragments of broken words and thoughts,
Yet glimpses of the true."

Prof. T. Gomperz, of Vienna, after making one correction in Haug's
reading, still found it unsatisfactory, till the thought struck him of
reading it from right to left round the vase, instead of from left to
right, when the confused syllables flashed, as by sudden
crystallization, into the pure Greek, and read: "To the divine
Prince."

Another inscription was found which Prof. Max Muller read as the very
name of ILION. Others were found which are not as yet interpreted.

[Illustration: LAMP FOUND AT TROY.]

[Page Decoration]

NINEVEH AND BABYLON.

Far away from the highways of modern commerce and the tracks of
ordinary travel lay a city buried in the sandy earth of a half-desert
Turkish province, with no trace of its place of sepulture. Vague
tradition said it was hidden somewhere near the river Tigris; but for
a long series of ages its existence in the world was a mere name--a
word. That name suggested the idea of an ancient capital of fabulous
splendor and magnitude; a congregation of palaces and temples,
encompassed by vast walls and ramparts--of "the rejoicing city that
dwelt carelessly; that said in her heart, I am, and there is none
beside me," and which was to become "a desolation and dry like a
wilderness."

More than two thousand years had it lain in its unknown grave, when a
French _savant_ and a wandering scholar sought the seat of the once
powerful empire, and searching till they found the dead city, threw
off its shroud of sand and ruin, and revealed once more to an
astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, and the idols;
the representations of war and the chase, of the cruelties and
luxuries of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the
Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh--twin sister of
Babylon--glorying in pomp and power, all traces of which were believed
to be gone; the Nineveh in which the captive tribes of Israel had
labored and wept, and against which the words of prophecy had gone
forth, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to
light. The proofs of ancient splendor were again beheld by living