The houses of offenders were pulled down and made into dunghills.

These practices imply a "violence" and cruelty beyond the ordinary Oriental limit; and we cannot be surprised that when final judgment was denounced against Babylon, it was declared to be sent, in a great measure, "because of men's blood, and for the violence of the land-of the city, and all that dwelt therein." It is scarcely necessary to add that the Babylonians were a proud people.

Pride is unfortunately the invariable accompaniment of success, in the nation, if not in the individual; and the sudden elevation of Babylon from a subject to a dominant power must have been peculiarly trying, more especially to the Oriental temperament.

The spirit which culminated in Nebuchadnezzar, when, walking in the palace of his kingdom, and surveying the magnificent buildings which he had raided on every side from the plunder of the conquered nations, and by the labor of their captive bands, he exclaimed, "Is not the great Babylon which I have built by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty ?"--was rife in the people generally, who, naturally enough, believed themselves superior to every other nation upon the earth.
"I am, and there is none else beside me," was the thought, if not the speech, of the people, whose arrogancy was perhaps somewhat less offensive than that of the Assyrians, but was quite as intense and as deep-seated.
The Babylonians, notwithstanding their pride, their cruelty, their covetousness, and their love of luxury, must be pronounced to have been, according to their lights, a religious people.

The temple in Babylonia is not a mere adjunct of the palace, but has almost the same pre-eminence over other buildings which it claims in Egypt.