parallelogram, or line of boundary, being thus completed, we have
now to ascertain how far it accords with the localities of the
researches; and we find that it not only comprehends the principal
mounds which have already been examined, but many others, in which
ruins are either actually, or almost certainly, known to exist.
Another important object of remark connected with this subject, is the
thickness of the wall surrounding the palace of Khorsabad, which Botta
states to be fifteen metres, _i.e._, forty-eight feet, nine inches, a
very close approximation to the width of the wall of the city itself,
which was "so broad as that three chariots might be driven upon it
abreast." This is about half the thickness of the wall of Babylon,
upon which "six chariots could be driven together," and which
Herodotus tells were eighty-seven feet broad, or nearly double that of
Khorsabad. The extraordinary dimensions of the walls of cities is
supported by these remains at Khorsabad. The Median wall, still
existing, in part nearly entire, and which crosses obliquely the plain
of Mesopotamia from the Tigris to the banks of the Euphrates, a
distance of forty miles, is another example. The great wall of China,
also, of like antiquity, we are told, "traverses high mountains, deep
valleys, and, by means of arches, wide rivers, extending from the
province of Shen Si to Wanghay, or the Yellow Sea, a distance of 1,500
miles. In some places, to protect exposed passages, it is double and
treble. The foundation and corner stones are of granite, but the
principal part is of blue bricks, cemented with pure white mortar. At
distances of about 200 paces are distributed square towers or strong
bulwarks." In less ancient times, the Roman walls in our own country
supply additional proof of the universality of this mode of enclosing
a district or guarding a boundary before society was established on a
firm basis. It may be objected against the foregoing speculations on
the boundary of Nineveh, that the river runs within the walls instead
of on the outside. In reply, we submit that when the walls were
destroyed, as described by the historian, the flooded river would
force for itself another channel, which in process of time would
become more and more devious from the obstructions offered by the
accumulated ruins, until it eventually took the channel in which it
now flows.

Babylon was the most beautiful and the richest city in the world. Even
to our age,