was produced by the walls of London being placarded with the emphatic words, "To stop the duke, go for gold;" advice which was followed, as soon as given, to a prodigious extent. The Duke of Wellington was then very unpopular; and on Monday, the 14th of May, it being currently believed that the duke had formed a cabinet, the panic became universal, and the run upon the Bank of England for coin was so incessant, that in a few hours upwards of half a million was carried off. Mr. Doubleday, in his Life of Sir Robert Peel, states it to be well known that the above placards were 66 the device of four gentlemen, two of whom were elected members of the reformed parliament. Each put down 201.; and the sum thus clubbed was expended in printing thousands of these terrible missives, which were eagerly circulated, and were speedily seen upon every wall in London. The effect is hardly to be described. It was electric."

WELLINGTON'S BED-CHAMBER.

At the north-east angle of Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, upon the ground floor, is "the duke's bedroom," which is narrow, shapeless, and ill-lighted; the bedstead small, provided with only a mattress and bolster, and scantily curtained with green silk; the only ornaments of the room being an unfinished sketch of the present Duchess of Wellington, two cheap prints of military men, and a small portrait in oil. Yet here slept the great duke, whose "eightieth year was by." In the grounds and shrubbery he took daily walking exercise where, with the garden-engine, he was wont to enjoy exertion." *** “In fine afternoons, the sun casts the shadow of the duke's equestrian statue full upon Apsley House, and the sombre image may be seen gliding spirit-like over the front."- -Quarterly Review, No. 184.

Part of the site of Apsley House was a piece of ground given by George II to an old soldier, Allen, whom the king recognised as having served in the battle of Dettingen. Upon this spot Allen built a small tenement, in place of the apple-stall kept by his wife; and on the erection of Apsley House, in 1784, the ground was sold for a considerable sum by Allen's successors to Apsley, Lord Bathurst. The apple-stall is shown in a print dated 1766.

* As did the Duke's great antagonist, Napoleon. January 2, 1820. General Bonaparte was "amusing himself with the pipe of the fire-engine, spouting water on the trees and flowers in his favourite garden."-Journal of Capt. Nicholls; Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena; Sir Hudson Lowe's Letters and Journals, 1853.

The Seven Wonders of the World.

THIS phrase has been for ages applied to seven historical monuments of the constructive skill and magnificent art of the antique world. They are:

1. THE GREAT PYRAMID OF EGYPT,

the most gigantic of the three pyramids near the village of Gizeh, about eleven miles from the banks of the Nile, forming a line to the westward of the city of Cairo. Herodotus was informed by the priests of Memphis that the great pyramid was built by Cheops, king of Egypt, about 900 B.C., or 450 years before he visited that country; that the body of Cheops was placed in a room beneath the bottom of the pyramid; and that the chamber was surrounded by a vault, to which the waters of the Nile were conveyed by a subterranean tunnel. Pliny and Diodorus Siculus agree in stating, that 360,000 men were employed twenty years in erecting this pyramid; and in contrast with this vast labour Sir John Herschel, calculating the weight of the pyramid to be 12,760 million pounds of granite,* at a medium height of 125 feet, adds, that it could have been raised by the effort of about 630 chaldrons of coal, a quantity consumed in some foundries in a week.

Herodotus states, that 1600 talents of silver were expended in providing the workmen with leeks, onions, and other food; and one great object of the Egyptian rulers in erecting this and other stupendous monuments was, to prevent the evils of over-populousness by accustoming the lower orders to a spare diet and severe labour. It may here be sufficient to state, that the pyramid consists of a series of platforms, each smaller than the one on which it rests, and consequently presenting the appearance of steps, which diminish in length from the bottom to the top; and of these steps there are 203. The entrance is in the north face. Within are passages leading to chambers lined with granite; in one of which, the King's Chamber, is a red granite sarcophagus, in which Cheops is supposed to have been entombed. This pyramid, the largest building in the world, has lost its apex and its casing. There is a second pyramid, retaining at its apex a portion of its casing, which is the tomb of Sensuphis. A third pyramid, the least ancient, was

Three times that of the stone in Plymouth Breakwater.

built by Mycerinus according to Herodotus, and by Queen Nitocris according to Manetho. The date of the pyramids is, by the Newtonian chronology, between 1451 and 1153 B.C., or nearly 800 years after Abraham's visit to Egypt. "It has been supposed by some," says Wilkinson, "that, from the pyramids not being mentioned in the Bible or in Homer, they did not exist before the Exodus, or in the time of the poet. The presence of the name of Rameses the Great (who preceded the Trojan war) sufficiently answers the latter objection."

:

The base of the great pyramid has been often stated to equal that of the area of Lincoln's Inn Fields; but the fact is otherwise the base of the pyramid measures 764 feet on each side; whereas Lincoln's Inn Fields, although 821 feet on one side, is only 625 feet 6 inches on another, so that the area of the pyramid is greater by many thousand square feet.-Colonel Howard Vyse On the Pyramids.

2. BABYLON,

in Greek Baßuλáv, derives its name from a Hebrew word signifying Babel, the confusion of tongues (Gen. xi. 1-9); or from another expression signifying the court or city of Belus. In Dan. iv. 27 it is termed "Babylon the great ;" and by Josephus (Antiq. viii. 6, 1), ʼn μeyáλn Baßulov, "the lady of the kingdoms; the glory of the whole earth." It was the metropolis of the province of Babylon, and of the Babylonio-Chaldean empire. Its foundations were laid with those of the tower of Babel.*

Herodotus states that the walls of Babylon were sixty miles in circumference, built of large bricks cemented with bitumen, and raised round the city in the form of a square, protected on the outside by a ditch lined with the same material. They were 87 feet thick and 350 feet high. According to Quintus Curtius, four-horse chariots could pass each other on them. The city was entered by twenty-five gates on each side, of solid brass, and strengthened by 250 towers.† (See also p. 29.)

The Palace of Nebuchadnezzar was a most magnificent and stupendous work. Its outer wall embraced six miles. Within were two other embattled walls, besides a great tower. The

Mr. Rich, in 1812, examined what were called "the Ruins of Babylon," near the modern town of Hillah, on the Euphrates. The most stupendous mass of ruins was an oblong mound, 762 yards in circumference, surmounted with a solid pile of brick, 37 feet high. This mound, Birs Nimroud, there is reason to believe with Niebuhr and Mr. Rich, was the Tower of Babel, or Belus, "which is pretty nearly in the same state in which Alexander saw it." Major Rennel considers the Pyramids of Egypt to be palpable imitations of the Babylonian Tower.

† Mr. Grote (Hist. Greece) institutes the following comparison with works of the kind in our time: "Though the walls of Nineveh and Babylon were much larger than those of Paris as it now stands, yet when we compare the two, not merely in size, but in respect of costliness, elaboration, and contrivance, the latter will be found to represent an infinitely greater amount of work."

Hanging-Gardens are attributed by Diodorus to Cyrus, who constructed them in compliance with the wish of his queen to possess elevated groves such as she had enjoyed on the hills around her native Ecbatana; for Babylon was flat. To gratify this wish, an artificial mountain was reared, 400 feet on each side; while terraces, one above another, rose to a height that overtopped the walls of the city, 300 feet in elevation. The ascent from terrace to terrace was by flights of steps; while the terraces themselves were reared to their various stages, resting on ranges of regular piers, one over the other. Mr Rich found upon the site a hollow pier, 60 feet square, lined with fine brick laid in bitumen, and filled with earth; this corresponds with Strabo's description of the hollow brick piers which supported the Hanging-Gardens, and in which piers the large trees grew

3. THE GOLD AND IVORY STATUE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS, the masterpiece of Phidias, the greatest artist that ever lived; was executed by him for the people of Elis, and surpassed his celebrated statue of Minerva in the Parthenon. The Jupiter was set up in the temple of that deity at Olympia, near Elis, where the Olympic games were celebrated. Pausanias describes the statue from personal observation, which Strabo corroborates. The god was formed of gold and ivory, 58 English feet in height, seated on a throne, and almost touching the roof of the temple. Upon his head was an olive crown; in his right hand he bore a winged figure of Victory, also of gold and ivory, crowned, and holding a wreath. In the god's left hand he bore a lofty sceptre, surmounted with an eagle. His sandals and robe were of gold, the latter painted with animals and flowers, particularly lilies. The throne was formed of ivory and ebony, inlaid with gold, set with precious stones, and sculptured with graceful figures. The faces of the steps bore bas-reliefs of classic myths, and the footstool rested upon four couchant lions. In this work Phidias embodied Homer's impersonation of the god : "He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows, Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god;

High Heaven with trembling the dread signal took,
And all Olympus in the centre shook."

The heathen historians tell us that Phidias received for his skill the testimony of Jupiter himself: when the artist prayed the god would make known if he was satisfied, immediately the pavement of the temple was struck by lightning, and the spot was afterwards marked by a bronze vase. Crowds flocked to Elis to behold this wonder; and in Greece and Italy it was held as a calamity to die without seeing it. Nor was the ad

miration merely the superstition of the multitude; for a Roman senator, when looking at this Jupiter of ivory and gold, had his mind moved as though the god were present. The able resoration of this figure has been learnedly commented on by M Quatremère de Quincy.

These

The Doric temple in which this statue was placed was in extreme length 369 feet, breadth 182 feet, as traced by Mr. Cockerell, from the foundation: many of the blocks of marble weigh rearly nine tons each; and each of two remaining capitals 's computed to weigh more than twenty-one tous. masses were raised 70 feet, and the flutings of the columns would contain a man in their hollow as in a niche. The pediments were sculptured with the wars of the Giants and the siege of Troy; upon the entablature stood a row of Atlantes, each 25 feet high, and supporting an upper entablature at 110 feet above the floor: the chest of one of these giants, restored, measured more than 6 feet. The nave of the temple was 18 feet higher and 2 feet broader than the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. Of this splendid edifice the basement alone remains.

4. THE TEMPLE OF DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS,

at Ephesus (the modern Natolia), the capital of the twelve Ionian cities in Asia Minor, was built around the famous image of the goddess. This edifice was burnt down on the night in which Alexander was born, by an obscure person named Eratostratus, who thus sought to transmit his name to posterity. Alexander made an offer to rebuild the temple, provided he was allowed to inscribe his name on the front; which the Ephesians refused. Aided, however, by the whole of Asia Minor, they erected a still more magnificent temple, which occupied them two hundred and twenty years. Pliny describes it as 425 feet long by 220 broad, and supported by 127 columns, each 60 feet high, and contributed by some prince; thirty of them were richly carved. Chersiphron was the architect. The altar was the work of Praxiteles. The famous sculptor, Scopas, is said to have chiselled one of the columns. Apelles contributed a splendid picture of Alexander the Great. The temple was built of cedar, cypress, and even gold; and within it were treasured offerings to the goddess, as paintings, statues, &c., the value of which almost exceeded computation. Nero is said to have despoiled the temple of much of these treasures; but it continued to exist until it was finally burnt by the Goths in the reign of Gallienus, A.D. 253-268.

Vitruvius considers this temple as the first edifice in which architecture was brought to perfection, and the first in which the Ionic order was employed. Its remains consist of walls of