Crœsus was very much incensed against the oracle at Delphi for having deceived him by false predictions; but the priests of the oracle replied that the destruction of the Lydian dynasty had long been decreed by fate on account of the guilt of Gyges, the founder of the line, who had murdered the rightful monarch, and usurped the crown. The oracles had foretold that a mighty empire would be overthrown, and Crœsus had wrongly imagined that it referred to the destruction of the kingdom of Cyrus. As to the other prediction made by the oracle, that when he should find a mule upon the throne of Media, he would lose his own, this had been fulfilled, as Cyrus, who was descended from the Persians on his father’s side, and from the Medians on his mother’s, had thus become a hybrid sovereign, represented by the mule. In his advance towards the dominions of Crœsus in Asia Minor, Cyrus had passed to the northward of the great and celebrated city of Babylon. He had now conquered all the nations from the Ægean Sea to the river Euphrates. He then subdued Syria and Arabia. After this he entered into Assyria and advanced towards Babylon, the only large city of the East yet unsubdued. The taking of Babylon is one of the greatest events in ancient history, and the principal circumstances with which it was attended were foretold in the Bible many years before it happened. Babylon, at this time, was the most magnificent city in the world. It was situated in a large plain, and was surrounded by walls which were eighty-seven feet thick, three hundred and fifty feet high, and sixty miles in circumference. These walls were in the form of a square, each side of which was fifteen miles long. They were built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, which bound bricks so firmly together that the mortar soon became harder than the bricks themselves. This wall was surrounded by a deep, wide trench filled with water. The great wall of Babylon contained 200,000,000 yards of solid masonry, or nearly twice the cubic contents of the famous wall of China. Each of the bricks was stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar. The wall was so wide that four chariots could move abreast upon its summit. Two hundred and fifty towers, each ten feet higher than the walls, rose above the parapet. One hundred gates of brass opened to as many streets. Each of the fifty streets was fifteen miles long, and one hundred and forty feet broad, crossing each other at right angles; these avenues divided the city into six hundred and seventy-six squares, each being two and a half miles in circuit. The buildings were erected around these squares with an open court in the centre, containing beautiful gardens and fountains. The river Euphrates flowed through the city, and was spanned by a bridge, five hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. Above the bridge rose an obelisk one hundred and twenty-five feet high. As the melting of the snows upon the mountains of Armenia caused the