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Excerpt from The History of the Jews, Vol. 2: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time Nothing could present a more striking contrast to their native country than the region into which the Hebrews were transplanted. Instead of their irregular and picturesque mountain city, crowning its unequal heights, and looking down into its deep and precipitous ravines, through one of which a scanty stream wound along; they entered the vast, square, and level city of Babylon, occupying both sides of the broad Euphrates: while all around spread immense plains, which were intersected by long straight canals, bordered by rows of willows. How unlike their national temple - a small but highly finished and richly adorned fabric, standing in the midst of its courts on the brow of a lofty precipice - the colossal temple of the Chaldean Bel, rising from the plain, with its eight stupendous stories or towers, one above the other, to the perpendicular height of a furlong! The palace of the Babylonian kings was more than twice the size of their whole city: it covered eight miles, with its.hanging gardens built on arched terraces, each rising above the other, and rich in all the luxuriance of artificial cultivation. How different from the sunny cliffs of their own land, where the olive and the vine grew spontaneously, and the cool, shady and secluded valleys, where they could always find shelter from the heat of the burning noon! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections