THE TOWER OF BABEL.

By this time the posterity of Noah had immensely augmented, and their presumption had encreased in proportion. All remembrance of the ravages caused by the deluge having subsided, the terrors of the Lord were no longer objects of dread. Cities began to rise from the plains, while man became vain of his power and arrogant in his imagined supremacy. "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." The picture represents a city, with the tower behind it enveloped in clouds, through which the lightning streams, in token of God's wrath at the presumption of his creatures in attempting to exalt their own power and withdrawing their trust from Him who had preserved their fathers from the flood, and given them a pledge of his protection against a similar catastrophe. A sudden darkness overspreads the city, which is relieved by the intense glare of the lightning that bursts from the skies, giving a more vivid reality to the awful visitation. In the foreground are seen the vast furnaces in which the workmen were busily employed preparing their brick when their language was confounded, so that they could not "understand one another's speech." The flames are magnified in the darkness, and appear to be at once a terror and a reproach to the presumptuous builders. Alarmed at the unexpected manifestation of God's anger, they are seen rushing from the upper part of the brick-kilns, terrified at the divine interposition, while beyond, on the right, an innumerable multitude is moving to and from the tower.