in him; but a mutiny arising among his own soldiers, the place soon fell into the hands of the enemy.

It seems most probable, therefore, that the city which Nebuchadnezzar besieged was the Palætyrus situated on the continent, and the Tyrus which Alexander contended against, the city seated on the island. †

The resistance offered by Tyre to the haughty Macedonian, whose arms had already completed the conquest of Syria, or at least decided its fate at the celebrated battle of Issus ‡, is a striking instance of what may be effected even by a commercial people whose military establishments were scarcely enumerated among the features of their high renown. "Let us contemplate these enterprizes," says a patriotic scholar of our own age, "as completed by the efforts of a single city, which, possibly, did not possess a territory of twenty miles in circumference, which sustained a siege of thirteen years against all the power of Babylon, and another of eight months against Alexander in the full career of his victories, and then judge whether a commercial spirit debases the nature of man, or whether any single city recorded in history is worthy to be compared with Tyre." §

"This proud mart of antiquity, whose resources of wealth and power are enumerated with so much eloquence by the prophet while proclaiming its destined fall, sent her fleets eastward to the

• Diodorus Siculus, 1. xix. c. 6.

+ M. Volney wonders at the necessity of the aqueduct to supply the old Tyre with water, if it stood as is supposed on the continent. (Vol. ii. p. 219.) It is true that in the invasion of Syria by Shalmanezer, at a much earlier period than the siege of Tyre by Alexander, guards are said to have been placed at the river and aqueducts of Tyre to hinder the Tyrians from drawing water. (Joseph. Ant. Jud. 1. ix. c. 14. s. 2.) But these were certainly other aqueducts than the splendid one existing now, which must be at least of a later date than the union of the island to the continent by Alexander, since a portion of it goes over the isthmus itself; and it is probable, too, of Roman work, as the arch, which is here the prominent feature of the masonry, is thought to have been unknown either to the Hebrews or to the early Greeks.

This was fought in the month of Mamacterion, in the 4th year of the 111th Olym piad, when Nicocrates was archon, and 333 years before the Christian era. Vincent's Periplus of the Eryth. Sea, vol. ii. p. 528.

G

gates of the Atlantic, which were the boundaries of all knowledge to every nation but their own; while from this parent city, whose splendour and magnificence was unrivalled, and the wealth of whose merchants equalled that of the kings of other lands, colonies went forth to become themselves kingdoms from the same sources of power.

The people of this "crowning city," as the prophet calls it, "whose merchants were princes, whose traffickers were the honourable of the earth †," were seemingly as alive to the love of liberty and independence as the possessors of the poorest rock in the ocean could have been; for one can scarcely conceive any other feeling to have prompted so daring a resistance as that which they offered to the career of Alexander's victories, when they closed the gates of their sea-girt fortress, and bade defiance to the conquering phalanxes which subsequently subdued the largest armies and over-ran the finest portions of the habitable globe. The love of liberty, it has been observed, will often animate the common bosom with superior energy; and, in a frenzy for their freedom, men of ordinary capacities are frequently expanded into heroes. The numbers of the besieged who fell in the resistance offered to the Macedonian are estimated at six thousand by one writer ‡, at seven thousand by another §, and at eight thousand by a third |, all sufficiently proving both the populousness of the city at that period, and the obstinacy of the resistance which it must have made against its assailants.

It was of the city thus conquered by Alexander, and consequently since its union to the main land, that the Greek and Roman geographers and historians record so much ¶; but it is of

* Vincent's Periplus of the Eryth. Sea, vol. ii. p. 527.

+ Isaiah, c. xxiii. v. 8.

+ Quintus Curtius, 1. iv. c. 4.

Arrian, Ex. Alex. 1. ii. c. 24.

§ Diodorus Siculus, 1. xvii.

¶ See Strabo, 1. xvi., who says much of the loftiness and beauty of the buildings there. Josephus, in describing the city of Zebulon as of admirable beauty, says it

the older city, whether seated on the island or on the main, that the eloquent picture of the Hebrew prophets is drawn, and on which their terrible denunciations are thundered forth, when its annihilation is threatened for daring to exult at the overthrow of Jerusalem, and to exclaim " Aha!" over the fallen city of the living God.*

The port of Tyre is mentioned soon after the date of Strabo's description, in the history of St. Paul's voyages, as the harbour at which the ship he sailed in was to unlade her burden; and even at that early period of the faith, he found disciples there with whom he tarried seven days. † Its inhabitants soon after became zealous Christians, and it was made the first archbishopric under the patriarchate of Jerusalem. ‡

Its conquest, by Salah-el-deen, in the year of the Hejira 583, or A.D. 1168, and its evacuation by the Count of Tyre, who fled to Tripoly and perished there, is to be found in the Arabian historians of these times. §

It was not long after visited by the Jewish Rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela, who describes it as a large city, having an excellent port, which was guarded by a large chain going from one side of the entrance to another. This traveller, who had already seen some of the finest commercial cities of Europe, thought that Tyre was at that period without an equal in the world. It was then celebrated for a peculiar manufacture of fine glass, and for excellent

had its houses built like those of Tyre, and Sidon, and Berytus. De Bello Jud. l. ii.

c.18. s. 9.

Bochart, from Pliny and Strabo, collects all the features of its magnificence, and enumerates them in his comparison by Tyre with the still more ancient city of Sidon. Phaleg et Canaan, pars prim. lib. iv. c. 35. p. 243.

Ezekiel, c. xxvi. v. 2.

+ Acts of the Apostles, c. xxi. v. 3.

Pococke's Descr. of the East, v. ii. part 1. p. 85.

§ See "Extraits Historiques, relatifs au Temps de Croisades," in "Les Mines de l'Orient, tom. iii. p. 70.

sugar, as well as for being the greatest mart of commerce in these

It was, however, soon rescued from the hands of the infidels, under whom it had almost regained its pristine splendour, according to this Jewish traveller's report, and was fought for as a portion of that sacred soil which was first bestowed upon the chosen Israelites, the people of God's peculiar care, and next honoured by its proximity to the scene of the sufferings of that same Deity's only begotten Son; a soil which it was thought a holy task to moisten with the richest blood of our ancestors, when kings and khalifs warred in person for the triumph of the crescent or the

cross.

The details of the expedition against Tyre under the royal zealots of Christendom are given by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in his account of the crusades † ; and its subsequent history is to be found in the pages of the same writer, collected from sources which few would have the industry or the patience to examine.

This city

William of Tyre, whose name is well known as an historian of these times, was an Englishman, who, from being prior of the Canons Regular in the church of Jerusalem, called the Lord's Sepulchre, was made the first archbishop of Tyre in the year 1128, by Guimunde, the patriarch of Jerusalem. was even then called the metropolis of all Phoenicia, and accounted the chief province of Syria, both for its productions and the number of its inhabitants. This William, having in his lifetime written many books and epistles, died here in the year 1130, and was buried in the church of Tyre. Origen, one of the most learned fathers of the church, and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, one of its most zealous defenders, were also buried in the

* Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, in Bergeron's Collection. Paris, 4to. The old Tyre was then thought to be buried in the sea, and its ruins to be seen below the water from boats.

+ Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. c. 59. p. 140. 8vo.

cathedral there *; and Baldwine, who had been archbishop of Canterbury six years, dying here in the train of the English King Richard, in 1190, closed on this contested spot the perils of his holy voyage. †

Amid all its changes of fortune and religion, it seems to have retained its original name, with very trifling alterations, and has now recovered its oldest and purest form of Soor, which is said to signify a rock, and in that sense is highly characteristic of the island on which it was built. ‡

Maundrell's account of the place, about a century ago, is that of " a mere Babel of broken walls, pillars, vaults, &c., there being not so much as one entire house left §;" and Bruce, I think, in conformity to the prophecy, describes it as "a rock whereon fishers dry their nets |;" since which time it has evidently arisen from its ruins.

The annexed plan of Tyre and its environs, constructed for the "Critical Enquiry into the Historians of Alexander, by M. de St. Croix," is generally accurate. The authorities for its construction are not given by M. Barbie du Bocage, in the work to which it is attached; but it is highly illustrative of the local features of this celebrated spot. ¶

The whole of the outer edge of the island is skirted by rocks; and the Egyptian port, being formed by moles, is not now apparent.

The long ledge of rocks to the northward, which guards the passage of entrance to the harbour there, has appearances of ruins precisely in the spot where the tomb of Rhodope is marked.

• Pococke, vol. ii. part 1. p. 82. + Hakluyt's Collection, vol. ii. p. 64. 4to. Tyrus, 18, rúg, Hebraicè dicitur Sor, et versitur tribulatio vel obsidio, sive angustia, aut vinculum, vel colligatio, seu plasmatia, aut figuratio, vel fortitudo, aut petra. Metropolis Phoenices, &c. Onomasticum Sacrum, p. 317.

Maundrell's Journey, p. 64. 8vo.

| Ezek. c. xxvi. v. 14.

Plate IV.