380 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the prostrate form that lies so helpless, so utterly and 

 wholly human, beneath the upraised paw of the king 

 of beasts. The group presents itself to the eye, owing 

 to this wear of old Time, much in the appearance of 

 those vast blocks of Carrara marble which the bold 

 chisel of Michael Angelo struck into, and then at the 

 point that the shapeless marble had begun to assume 

 the merest " abbozzo " of the great sculptor's idea, the 

 block was suddenly abandoned, and left as a wonder 

 and a puzzle to future ages ; so does this group of the 

 lion and the man now bear an unfinished, unwrought 

 appearance, but you cannot look at it a moment, and 

 not instantly avow the majesty and grandeur of the 

 idea that once lay there so mightily embodied. This 

 dark-coloured colossal statue, which may once have 

 stood under the gorgeous roof of a temple, and before 

 which the queenly Semiramis, proud and supremely 

 beautiful, may once have bowed, stands now canopied 

 by the grandest of all canopies certainly high 

 heaven, but never noticed but by the desert wind 

 that sweeps moaning over it, and the jackals that 

 yelp around, as they hold high revel over the bones 

 of some camel who has been good enough to die in 

 the vicinity. 



Hillah is distant some seven miles from Babylon. 

 The town, shrinking away from the howling desert, 

 clings, after the manner of confiding childhood, to 

 the river's banks. We passed through that part of 

 the town which lies upon the left bank, and made 



