Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GROWTH OF CITIES. Cities had their origin in the necessity of a common defence. Hence the first cities were fortresses; and where the face of the country admitted of it, were built on hills or amid rocky fastnesses. Petra was built amid impregnable rocks. Rome was built on seven hills. The old cities of Etruscan origin are scattered on a chain of hills; there the inhabitants are still congregated, while the pastures, the fields of corn, and the vines fill the plains below. Where the country presented only a continuous plain, and there were no hills and rocks to be found, cities were located on the banks of large rivers, whose waters were diverted into moats around the walls. Babylon stood on the banks of the Euphrates, Nineveh on the banks of the Tigris, and Paris on an island in the Seine. The place of strength next became the seat of empire, ? the residence of kings, ?and collected about it regal dignity and magnificence. So Petra became a gem of beauty among the rocks, ?the glory of Arabia; Babylon aud Nineveh the vast palaces of kings; and Rome, upon the seven hills, the Capital and Mistress of the world. Sometimes, like Alexandria, St. Petersburgh, Berlin, and Washington, cities have been founded as Capitals. But other necessities arose?the necessities of Commerce; and Commerce sought for itself the centres of trade, and facilities of transportation. Thus Tyre, and Sidon, and Carthage, and Athens sprang up on the Mediterranean; Venice upon islands in the Adriatic; Byzantium on the Bosporus; London on the Thames; and Palmyra on the grand route by which Caravans passed from the rising to the setting sun. In the feudal times, when the Barons built upon the hills, or perched upon pinnacled rocks, not cities, but their solitary towers, to overawe the weak, and to..