It will appear, we believe, that the first astronomers of Chaldea, Phœnicia, and Egypt, are not now known as astronomers, by name, if we except the person of the royal Nimrod, the founder of the Chaldean empire, which name is often confounded with Belus; sometimes one is put for the other, and often Belus is called the son of Nimrod. How the truth of this was, we shall not at present determine: be it as it may, it is allowed on all hands that the sideral science claims for its inventor no less a person than the founder of the first monarchy in the world. That this science was first introduced by the founder of the Tower of Babel is not questioned, because it is more evident, that in that country there must have existed from necessity, the expediency of the most approved observation, which could be made upon this eminently useful science; where, on account of the excessive solar heat, people generally travel by night: where, for hundreds of miles, are nothing but pathless deserts, with a horizon as boundless and little impeded as that of the ocean; assuredly under such circumstances, the local situation of the site of the immense Observatory of Babel must point out the expediency of procuring some intelligence from the position which the inhabitants discovered the host of heaven to appear in at the rising, setting, &c.; for from what will appear in the course of this article, it will be very evident that the Tower of Babel was constructed for the purpose of an astronomical observatory; farther, that the climate of Chaldea was most favourable to the exercise of that sublime art, will not admit of a question, when we consider the atmosphere is so pure, so clear, so free from exhalation, that at night the sky is said to resemble an immense canopy of black velvet studded with embossed gold, from the appearance of the stars; and that it was not only the appearance of the stars, their rising, setting, and motion, by which they knew time was to be measured; but also the distinction between one star and another could be correctly ascertained from the usual colour--here it was the various planets, zodiacal constellations, and the other asterisms in both hemispheres, received their primary names. The preceding circumstance, it is conceived, fixes the local place where the science had its origin. The Tower of Babel was a parallelogram, with sides of unequal length. Herodotus thus describes it.--“The Temple of Jupiter Belus occupies the other [square of the city], whose huge gates of brass may be seen. It is a square building; in the midst rises a tower of the height of one furlong, upon which resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular succession. The ascent is on the outside, which, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest tower: in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient resting place.”