But during the period of vigor, harmony within the palace, and confidence in each other inspires and unites all the members of the royal house.

When discord has once entered inside the gates, when the family no longer holds together, when suspicion and jealousy have replaced the trust and affection of a happier time, the empire has passed into the declining stage, and has already begun the descent which conducts, by quick or slow degrees, to destruction.

The murder of Sennacherib, if it was, as perhaps it was, a judgment on the individual, was, at least equally, a judgment on the nation.

When, in an absolute monarchy, the palace becomes the scene of the worst crimes, the doom of the kingdom is sealed--it totters to its fall--and requires but a touch from without to collapse into a heap of ruins.
Esar-haddon, the son and successor of Sennacherib, is proved by the Assyrian Canon, to have ascended the throne of Assyria in B.C.

681--the year immediately previous to that which the Canon of Ptolemy makes his first year in Babylon, viz., B.C.680.