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BABYLON 255
broke over us. It seemed natural to- be immersed in
silence ; could anything else be expected from a land
which had never been alive with the stir of humanity
even in far-off ages, of which one might now feel the
hush while listening for the echo? The desert had
always been silent and would be silent for ever more
—a dead, unconscious silence, with no significance
save of absence of life. But when we looked at the
site of Babylon stretched just beneath us, we became
vividly conscious of a real, living silence; we were
listening to the "hum of mighty workings"; voices
of souls long since dead, the dust of whose bodies lay
at our feet, were " wakening the slumbering ages."
Had not Nebuchadnezzar entered into the House of
the Dead in the great cavern Araltu, the Land of No
Return ? The dead had been stirred up, even the
chief ones of earth, to greet him as he entered hell:
'' Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou
become like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought down to
the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is
spread under thee, and the worms cover thee, ..."
and they looked at him narrowly, saying, " Is this
the man that made the earth to tremble ? "
And yet still for us " the wind uttered " and " the
spirit heard" his vainglorious cry: "Is not this the
great Babylon that I have built for the house of the
kingdom by the might of my power and for the
honour of my majesty ? "
The silent answer to it lay at our feet. And, listen
ing, we heard the solemn warnings of Daniel, the
sorrowful forebodings of Jeremiah, and, above all, the
ironical voice of Isaiah:—
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