If the buried cities of the East had been altogether destroyed and lost, and we possessed only a brief record of their disappearance, the subject might not possess much interest for us, and there would be no material for writing a book. But we are now witnessing a resurrection of some of them, and are recovering a story of the past, such as revived Egyptian mummies might be able to tell. Nay, not only Egyptians who walked about-- “In Thebes’s streets three thousand years ago, When the Memnonium was in all its glory,” but Chaldean shepherds who watched the stars and were perhaps the first to give names to the signs of the Zodiac. The ancient relics and records which are now being recovered from Egypt, Palestine, Assyria, and Babylonia, revive forgotten stories of human struggle, and furnish material for new chapters in the history of Art, Science, Laws, and Language, of Mythology, Morals, and Religion. They also throw frequent side lights upon the Bible narrative, and enable us to compare the Israelites more fairly with their contemporaries and predecessors. The catastrophes which led to the partial destruction, and the eventual burial of the cities of the East must have seemed nothing less than pure calamities at the time; but one of the results has been the providential preservation of the remains for the enlightenment of the present generation. When a buried city is unearthed, it serves to confute the scepticism which had been growing up, and to rectify the errors which had found their place in books of history. We are familiar with the fact that the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were overwhelmed--the former by streams of lava, the latter by showers of ashes, pumice, and stones, from the crater of Vesuvius, in A.D. 79. The existence of those cities had come to be doubted, and for ages they were spoken of as “the fabulous cities;” nevertheless, after sixteen centuries, they were brought to light, and they present us with a picture of Roman life, such as history by itself could never have supplied. The site of Pompeii had always borne the name of _Civita_, or the city; and in 1748, a Spanish colonel of engineers, having heard that the remains of a house had been discovered, with ancient statues and other objects, obtained leave to excavate. In a few days his labours met with encouraging reward, and eventually about one third of the ancient city was uncovered. We may now walk about in Pompeii, observing how its houses were built, and how its streets were paved. We see the ruts worn by the wheels of chariots, we note the public fountains, the temples, the theatre, which would seat 10,000 people. We notice the corn-mills in the bakers’ shops, the vats in the dyers’ shops, and in private houses we observe with interest the many articles of domestic use. Excepting that the upper stories of the houses have been destroyed--either burnt by the red-hot stones, or broken down by the weight of matter which fell