And the builders of the tower prospered in their work. They made huge kilns without the gates of the city to burn the brick required for the vast labour which they had undertaken. Night and day they worked at the massy citadel, which was to exalt man's power above his Maker's, and set the anger of God at nought; and as, tier above tier, the fabric ascended to the clouds, the exultation of the people arose, and their terror of Divine vengeance diminished.

A long and toilsome task it was to rear the huge pile. As the tower increased in height, it became almost a day's journey to reach the point where the labourers wrought; and still not half the work was completed. The rapidity with which the building proceeded, however, was almost inconceivable, considering the number of persons necessary to conduct it, the well-ordered division of labour required, the extreme difficulty of the ascent, which was by a winding road, built with and being a portion of the tower, and forming an inclined plane from the summit to the base, and the thin atmosphere which as they mounted from the earth was found to envelope the workmen. Weeks, months, years passed, and still early and late the builders and artificers were seen in countless throngs, steadily pursuing their vocation in the construction of the gigantic fabric. Already was the top of the building enveloped in clouds, whence the workmen could see

the evening lightnings playing in mid air beneath them, and storms gather and burst at their feet. It was an awful thing to gaze from the uppermost scaffoldings downward to the earth and the waters, and to see the sun rise and set in the distant horizon. The followers of Nimrod, however, were undaunted, and endued with a spirit of perseverance, which seemed indomitable and superhuman.

At length the Almighty, having observed the vain toil of the self-willed creatures whom He had made, came down accompanied with his angels unseen towards the earth. And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

So the Lord brought a storm upon the earth, with thick clouds and darkness, and thunder and rain. The builders at the great tower ceased their work, and the labourers at the kilns and furnaces, where the bricks were burned, were affrighted and fled. The crackling thunder rocked the city, with its temple and palaces, and the lightnings streamed around turret and pinnacle, and lighted the streets and walls with a glare which looked like that of a general conflagration. All night the storm raved with a violence that seemed to

threaten the dissolution of the world. The roofs of the temple of Baal were rent, and the battlements fell from the palace of the hunter king. The great tower itself shook like a cedar, and the scaffolding around its summit was loosened and precipitated to the ground with a crash which seemed to affect the foundations of the whole city. Many buildings were stricken with lightning and overwhelmed in ruin; and in the intervals of the storm might be heard wailings of anguish and fear, and the blaspheming cries of terror and despair.

When morning dawned upon the city, and the thick clouds rolled slowly away, the inhabitants came forth into the streets and public places, with trembling steps and ghastly visages, to learn what mischief had been wrought by the dreadful visitation of the preceding night. But lo! when they were assembled, they could not understand each other's speech. The Lord had confounded their language, so that none knew what his neighbour said. Their converse was a jargon, utterly confused and unintelligible; yet each was unconscious of change within himself, and believed that he was mocked by the person whom he addressed. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, rode forth among the tumultuous crowd; but his commands were no longer heeded, his behests no longer understood. The confusion, the want of intelligence became terrible.