The fate of Tyre is said to be intimately associated with the prophecies of Isaiah, and a great historian makes the following remarks, which we are much afraid find illustration in the histories of most great commercial states:-- “One of God’s designs, in the prophecies just now cited, is to give us a just idea of a traffic whose only motive is avarice, and whose fruits are pleasures, vanity, and the corruption of morals. Mankind look upon cities enriched by commerce like that of Tyre (and it is the same by private persons) as happier than any other; as worthy of envy, and as fit, from their liberty, labour, and the success of their application and conduct, as to be proposed as models for the rest to copy after; but God, on the other hand, exhibits them to us under the shameful image of a woman lost to all sense of virtue, whose only view is to seduce and corrupt youth; who only soothes the passions and flatters the senses; who abhors modesty and every sentiment of honour; and who, banishing from her countenance every indication of shame, glories in her ignominy. We are not to infer from this that traffic is sinful in itself; but we should separate from the essential foundation of trade, which is just and lawful, when rightly used, the passions and extravagantly ambitious and selfish views of men, which intermix with it, and pervert the order and the end of it.” THIRD SIEGE, A.C. 313. It would be imagined that a city so laid waste as Tyre was by Alexander, could not easily or shortly recover strength to contend against any enemy, and yet we find Tyre, only nineteen years after, maintaining itself for fifteen months against Antigonus, one of Alexander’s captains, who had been present at its great siege. But the fugitives from Sidon and other parts, the women and children from Carthage, with, most likely, many enterprising strangers, thought the traditions of Tyre too great and tempting to allow it to be long abandoned; and if not so glorious as it had been, this queen of commercial cities soon became a highly respectable mart, though its trade was reduced within much narrower limits: it had embraced the world; it was now confined to the neighbouring countries, and it had lost the empire of the sea. Seconded by the famous Demetrius Poliorcetes, his son, Antigonus presented himself before the place with a numerous fleet, which made him master of the sea, and cut the besieged off from supplies of provisions. As the siege was too protracted to accord with the other views of Antigonus, he left the operations under the command of Andronicus, one of his generals, who, by pressing the Tyrians very closely, and by making frequent assaults, obliged them at length to capitulate. This important conquest was made A.C. 313. FOURTH SIEGE, A.D. 638.