it may be questioned whether, even to the last, the predominant spirit was not warlike and manly, or even fierce and violent.  Among the many denunciations of Assyria in Scripture, there is only one which can even be thought to point to luxury as a cause of her downfall; and that is a passage of very doubtful interpretation.  In general it is her violence, her treachery, and her pride that are denounced.  When Nineveh repented in the time of Jonah, it was by each man “turning from his evil way and from the violence which was in their hands.”  When Nahum announces the final destruction, it is on “the bloody city, full of lies and robbery.”  In the emblematic language of prophecy, the lion is taken as the fittest among animals to symbolize Assyria, even at this late period of her history.  She is still “the lion that did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lioness, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.”  The favorite national emblem, if it may be so called, is accepted as the true type of the people; and blood, ravin, and robbery are their characteristics in the mind of the Hebrew prophet.

In mental power the Assyrians certainly deserve to be considered as among the foremost of the Asiatic races.  They had not perhaps so much originality as the Chaldaeans, from whom they appear to have derived the greater part of their civilization; but in many respects it is clear that they surpassed their instructors, and introduced improvements which gave a greatly increased value and almost a new character to arts previously discovered.  The genius of the people will best be seen from the accounts hereafter to be given of their language, their arts, and their system of government.  If it must be allowed that these have all a certain smack of rudeness and primitive simplicity, still they are advances upon aught that had previously existed—­not only in Mesopotamia—­but in the world.  Fully to appreciate the Assyrians, we should compare them with the much-lauded Egyptians, who in all important points are very decidedly their inferiors.  The spirit and progressive character of their art offers the strongest contrast to the stiff, lifeless, and unchanging conventionalism of the dwellers on the Nile.  Their language and alphabet are confessedly in advance of the Egyptian.  Their religion is more earnest and less degraded.  In courage and military genius their superiority is very striking; for the Egyptians are essentially an unwarlike people.  The one point of advantage to which Egypt may fairly lay claim is the grandeur and durability of her architecture.  The Assyrian palaces, magnificent, as they undoubtedly were, must yield the palm to the vast structures of Egyptian Thebes.  No nation, not even Rome, has equalled Egypt in the size and solemn grandeur of its buildings.  But, except in this one respect, the great African kingdom must be regarded as inferior to her Asiatic rival—­which was indeed “a cedar in Lebanon, exalted above all the trees of the field—­fair in greatness and in the length of his branches—­so that all the trees that were in the garden of God envied him, and not one was like unto him in his beauty.”