wall was disputed inch by inch, and with increasing fury by both parties,--each being resolved to conquer or to die! While the conflict was raging on the walls,--where the loud sounds and flashing weapons seemed but the similitude of the over-hanging thunder and the vivid lightning,--Azelmic, his Priests and body-guards, prepared to protect their God and Temple to the last; in their despair and wild devotion they took the golden Statue of their Deity from its pedestal, and with massive chains of the same metal to secure it, and with huge nails driven through perforated holes in the feet, they thus fastened it to the broad summit of the great Altar of the Nation! The devoted Sidonians were not inactive, for they were watching the progress of the storming of the walls, and as they learnt (from the shouts) that the invaders were about to enter the city, they drew near,--_resolved to receive at the Seaward Gates_ those Fugitives who would rather choose a home within the Galleys, than a grave within the Citadel. The bloody contest at the storming point was terrible in its effects, both upon the invaders and the besieged; for the falling masses of stone buried in one indiscriminate grave both friends and foes. At length, the towers becoming useless from the walls being lowered beneath the level of the drawbridges, they, with the engines and machines were overthrown on either side of the causeway, and the famed Macedonian Phalanx passed the breach,--but the dead and dying, with their upraised spears, and broken shafts in their writhing bodies, formed for a time a barrier against the advance of a division of horse,--they were recalled by the shrill trumpets, while the pioneers levelled the path of death;--a second troop of Infantry passed on to the support of the first, who were now in desperate conflict on the walls and breach with the opposing ranks of the despairing Tyrians, many of whom empaled themselves on the triple-spears of the Phalanx:--when on a preconcerted signal from an upreared flag (for the now loud thunder and deafening shouts and shrieks deadened all trumpet-sounds to the distant soldiery) the two battalions of Infantry on the ruins opened to the right and left,--and Alexander,--mounted on Bucephalus, and with the Standard inscribed _Granicus_, just snatched from his banner-bearer, and at the head of his Officers and Cavalry, flew like "fiery Mars" to the summit of the breach! At that instant a terrific flash rent the dark storm-clouds, and a shaft from the wild tempest struck to the ground the marble Statue from the apex of the Temple,--the entablature was sundered as by an earthquake! Alexander at that moment,--with his bright corslet and white-plumed helm reflecting back the lightning glare,--his inspiring face and standard turned to his troops,--his unsheathed and glittering sword pointing to the foe,--his white and noble war-steed with storm-scattered mane, and upreared head and feet, as if spurning the dying bodies beneath his