garden-grounds without the rampart walls, that, rising to forty cubits in height, were yet so wide as to admit of three chariots being driven abreast along their summits, flanked with lofty towers standing out in pairs, bluff and bold, like defiant warriors, and utterly impregnable to assault. Between every two of these, large gates of brass, worked in fantastic ornaments representing gods, men, and animals, amongst which the bull was the most conspicuous, stood open from sunrise to sunset, while through their portals passed and repassed a busy crowd, swarming like bees in and out of the rich and magnificent city, her own especial residence, which the Great Queen had created to be a Wonder of the World. What mattered waste of life and treasure, starving families, fainting peasants, the sinking slave and the task-master's whip? Each countless brick in all those leagues of building might be moistened with tears and cemented with blood, every stone raised on the crushed and mangled corpses of its founders; masses of marble, slabs of alabaster, roof, tower, and pinnacle, beam of cedar, and parapet of gold, might tell their separate tales of famine, disease, misery, and oppression—what matter? The Great Queen said, "Raise me here a city by the river that shall be worthy of my name!" and straightway up-sprang, on either bank of the mighty stream, such structures of pride, splendour, and magnificence, as were not to be surpassed by that very tower of man's defiance to his Maker, about which their foundations were laid.

Passing within the walls, a guard of Assyrian bowmen turned out to greet with warlike honours the messenger from their monarch's camp; their exertions were even required to clear a passage for him as he rode through the crowded streets—men, women, and children thronging and pressing in as he passed on, shouting a thousand cheers and acclamations, striving with each other to touch his feet, his garments, the horn of his bow, the carved sheath of his sword, the very trappings and accoutrements of his horse. With all his desire for dispatch, it was necessary to rein Merodach back to a foot's-pace; and many a dainty flower fell whirling down on the young warrior, many a charm and amulet was cast with unerring aim on his knees and saddle-cloth, while he paced forward under stately palaces, solemn temples, or broad terraces glowing like gardens with bright-robed Assyrian women, who flung their veils aside to shower greetings and welcome on the brave.

The watchman at the gate had long expected such a one. With the first glint of his armour in the distant waste the news spread like wildfire, and the whole population of the city was astir.

So he rode slowly on, the observed of all; and still, turn which way he would, above that sea of faces, amidst that mass of triumph, splendour, and gorgeous colouring, floated like a star shining through a mist the pale spectral beauty of the gentle girl whom he had left an hour ago at the Well of Palms—even the shouts that rent his ear seemed to reëcho from afar in an unearthly whisper, "Ishtar, Ishtar! pure, sacred, and beautiful queen of night!"

The streets were wider, the buildings more magnificent, the crowd, if possible, denser, as he proceeded through the city.

Presently, reaching a wide flight of low broad marble steps, flanked by those colossal bulls with eagles' wings and human heads, that represented the strength and solidity of the great Assyrian empire, he halted to dismount; for a cloth of gold and scarlet had been rolled out from top to bottom, and down these stairs were marching a body of white-robed priests with slow and solemn gait, their centre figure walking three paces before the rest, and advancing obviously to hold conference with the messenger from the camp.

Then the young warrior took a jewelled signet from his breast, and with a low obeisance pressed it to heart, mouth, and forehead; while over the eager multitude came unbroken silence, as Sarchedon tendered to Assarac, high-priest of Baal, his token from the Great King.

CHAPTER III

SEMIRAMIS

The silence lasted but a short space. When his lord, ere he accompanied that priestly escort into the palace, bestowed one parting caress on Merodach, shouts longer and more deafening than ever went up into the sunny sky. The good horse, led away by half a dozen negroes, now seemed to attract universal attention; for Sarchedon had disappeared between the gigantic bulls of stone that guarded each entrance to the royal dwelling. His armour, here and there defaced with sword-stroke or spear-thrust, his dusty, travel-stained garments, and, notwithstanding bodily strength and warlike training, the weary gait of one who has seen the sun set twice without quitting the saddle, were in marked contrast to the glittering splendour and refined magnificence of all that surrounded him. The marble steps, skirted by their entablatures of gilding and sculpture coloured to the life; the broad level terrace, glistening and polished like a steel breastplate inlaid with gold; the regal front of the costly palace itself, with its colossal eagle-headed figures, its winged monsters, couching or erect, its sacred emblems, its strange deities, its mystic forms, tributes of adoration offered to a host of gods, as the long succession of lifelike carvings on the walls, brought out in high relief with boldness of design and brightness of tint, were memorials of the triumphs won by a line of kings.

Here were represented the pleasures of the chase, the vicissitudes of war, the lion, the stag, the boar, the wild bull, beasts, landscapes, rivers, chariots and horsemen, warriors, captives, towers, and towns. Above rose a hundred stately pillars to support their painted chambers roofed with cedar and other precious wood, inlaid in elaborate and fantastic patterns, brilliant with vermilion or other gaudy colours, and profusely ornamented with gold. Over these lofty rooms rose yet another story, on ivory columns carved with the utmost skill that Indian handicraft could produce and Bactrian triumphs furnish, under a roof of which the very battlements and parapets were plated with silver and gold.

High above all towered the sacred structure of cedar, which formed that mysterious retreat, remote from the gaze of man, where none might enter but the monarch alone when ministering in his holy office, and combining in his own person the sacred characters of priest and king.

Assarac left his retinue at the gate of the palace, where stood two pillars of sardonyx to render poison innocuous should it pass through, and over which a gigantic carbuncle flashed its lurid rays, that seemed to shed an angry gleam even in the darkness of night. He bade Sarchedon follow, and the pair strode swiftly on through a cool and spacious hall, propped by as many columns as there were days in the Assyrian year, or furlongs in the circuit of the city walls, till, having thus traversed the palace at its narrowest part, they emerged once more on a paradise or garden, where the first object that met their eyes was a wild stag roused from his lair, and scouring with all the freedom of his native mountains to the shelter of a neighbouring thicket.

"She seldom hunts within these gardens now," was the priest's comment on this startling incident. "She cares for no tamer pastime than to ride the lion down, and shoot him with bow and arrow when at bay. There are none left here since my lord the king slew three with his javelin not a bowshot from where we stand; so she must away to the desert, or the mountains beyond the great river, for the sport she loves so well. Follow me close; you might lose yourself in this pleasant labyrinth, and it is death, my friend—by impalement too!—for any one caught disturbing the game."

He looked keenly in the other's face while he spoke, and seemed gratified to observe that the young soldier received this announcement with perfect unconcern.

Notwithstanding the power of an Assyrian sun, its