Part 37

[308] "Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: so that the man that is tender among you and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates."--DEUT. xxviii. 47-57.

[309] Deut. xxix. 22, 24, 27.

[310] Robinson.

[311] Buckingham.

[312] The patriarch, says an accomplished traveller, makes his appearance in a flowing vest of silk, instead of a monkish habit, and every thing around him bears the character of Eastern magnificence. He receives his visitors in regal stateliness; sitting among clouds of incense, and regaling them with all the luxuriance of a Persian court.

[313] Dr. Clarke.

[314] Robinson.

[315] Matt. xiii. 2.

[316] D'Anville.

[317] Id.

[318] Buckingham.

[319] 2 Kings xxiii. 10, 12. 2 Chron. xxvii. 3.

[320] 2 Kings xxiii. 10.

[321] Brewster.

[322] Robinson.

[323] Id.

[324] Carne.

[325] John xx.

[326] Ib. v. 4.

[327] Ib. v. 5, 11.

[328] Clarke.

[329] Robinson.

[330] La Martine.

[331] Carne.

[332] Id.

[333] Robinson.

[334] Id.

[335] Josephus; Tacitus; Prideaux; Rollin; Stackhouse; Pococke; D'Anville; Gibbon; Rees; Brewster; Clarke; Eustace; Chateaubriand; Buckingham; Robinson; La Martine; Carne.

[336] Rollin.

[337] Polybius; Plutarch; Rollin; Titler; Barthelemy; Chateaubriand; Dodwell.

[338] Shaw; Chandler; Kinneir; Malte-Brun; Buckingham; Porter.

[339] Rollin.

[340] Rollin.

[341] Turner.

[342] Those of Magnesia amounted to fifty talents every year, a sum equivalent to 11,250_l._ sterling.

[343] Such was the custom of the ancient kings of the East. Instead of settling pensions on persons they rewarded, they gave them cities, and sometimes even provinces, which, under the name of bread, wine, &c, were to furnish them abundantly with all things necessary for supporting, in a magnificent manner, their family and equipage.--ROLLIN.

[344] Civil Architecture, 617.

[345] Pococke; Chandler; Encycl. Metrop.

[346] Rollin.

[347] Rollin.

[348] Dodwell.

[349] Rollin; Dodwell; Williams.

[350] This was the same plan as Hannibal followed afterwards at the battle of Cannæ.

[351] Rollin; Wheler; Barthelemy; Clarke; Dodwell.

[352] Barthelemy; Rollin; Rees; Dodwell.

[353] Thucydides; Dodwell.

[354] This story is told at length in Statius's Thebaid.

[355] Dodwell.

[356] Thucydides; Pausanias; Plutarch; Rollin; Wheler; Chandler; Barthelemy; Dodwell.

[357] Savary.

[358] Rollin.

[359] Rollin.

[360] Alexandria may be supposed to have been partly built with its ruins.

[361] Malte-Brun.

[362] Rollin.

[363] The London and Birmingham Railway is unquestionably the greatest public work ever executed, either in ancient or modern times. If we estimate its importance by the labour alone which has been expended on it, perhaps the Great Chinese Wall might compete with it; but when we consider the immense outlay of capital which it has required,--the great and varied talents which have been in a constant state of requisition during the whole of its progress,--together with the unprecedented engineering difficulties, which we are happy to say are now overcome,--the gigantic work of the Chinese sinks totally into the shade.

It may be amusing to some readers, who are unacquainted with the magnitude of such an undertaking as the London and Birmingham Railway, if we give one or two illustrations of the above assertion. The great pyramid of Egypt, that stupendous monument which seems likely to exist to the end of all time, will afford a comparison.

After making the necessary allowances for the foundations, galleries, &c., and reducing the whole to one uniform denomination, it will be found that the labour expended on the great _pyramid_ was equivalent to lifting fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty-three million cubic feet of stone one foot high. This labour was performed, according to Diodoras Siculus by three hundred thousand, to Herodotus by one hundred thousand men, and it required for its execution twenty years.

If we reduce in the same manner the labour, expended in constructing the London and Birmingham Railway, to one common denomination, the result is twenty-five thousand million cubic feet of material (reduced to the same weight as that used in constructing the pyramid) lifted one foot high, or nine thousand two hundred and sixty-seven million cubic feet more than was lifted one foot high in the construction of the pyramid; yet this immense undertaking has been performed by about twenty thousand men in less than five years.

From the above calculation have been omitted all the tunnelling, culverts, drains, ballasting, and fencing, and all the heavy work at the various stations, and also the labour expended on engines, carriages, wagons, &c. These are set off against the labour of drawing the materials of the pyramid from the quarries to the spot where they were to be used--a much larger allowance than is necessary.

As another means of comparison, let us take the cost of the railway and turn it into pence, and allowing each penny to be one inch and thirty-four hundredths wide, it will be found that these pence laid together, so that they all touch, would more than form a continuous band round the earth at the equator.

As a third mode of viewing the magnitude of this work, let us take the circumference of the earth in round numbers at one hundred and thirty million feet. Then, as there are about four hundred million cubic feet of earth to be moved in the railway, we see that this quantity of material alone, without looking to any thing else, would, if spread in a band one foot high and one foot broad, more than three times encompass the earth at the equator.--LECOUNT.

[364] Saturday Magazine.

[365] Saturday Magazine.

[366] Monthly Magazine.

[367] Harmonies of Nature.

[368] Strabo mentions the sepulchre, lib. xvii. p. 808.

[369] Herodotus; Diodorus; Strabo; Pliny; Plutarch; Arrian; Quintus Curtius; Rollin; Maupertuis; Montague; Maillet; Pococke; Shaw; Savary; Norden; Sandwich; Browne; Denon; Belzoni; Salt; Clarke; Wilkinson; Lecount.

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Transcriber's Notes:

1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.

2. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break.

3. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the end of pages to the end of this text.

4. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

5. Certain words use oe ligature in the original.

6. In this etext letters with overhead macron are represented within square brackets preceded by equals sign. For instance, [=a] is used to represent letter 'a' with macron above it.

7. Other than that, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained.