reigners could not easily gain admission into this sacerdotal order; and it was only at the express solicitation of the King of Persia, at whose court he resided, that this extraordinary favour was accorded to Themistocles. Whether the old Persian doctrine and system of light* did not undergo material alterations in the hands of its Median restorer, Zoroaster; or whether this doctrine were preserved in all its purity by the order of the Magi, may well be questioned. It is certain, at least, that that primitive veneration of nature is found completely disfigured and corrupted in the small existing remnant of the sect of Guebers, or fire-worshippers.

On the order of the Magi devolved the important trust of the monarch's education-a trust which must necessarily have given them great weight and influence in the state. They were in high credit at the Persiangates-for that was the Oriental name given to the capital of the empire, and the abode of the prince; and they took the most active part in all the factions that encompassed the throne, or that were formed in the vicinity of the court. In Greece, and even in Egypt, the sacerdotal fraternities and associations of initiated, formed by the mysteries, had in general but an indirect, though not unimportant, influence on affairs of state; but in the Persian monarchy, they acquired a complete political ascendency. The next main pillar of the Persian monarchy was its nobility, or the principal race of the Pasargads, who immediately surrounded the throne, enjoyed the highest prerogatives, and formed indeed the flower of the Persian army. The strict moral and military education which this nobility received, and of which Xenophon has drawn such a beautiful ideal sketch, constituted the chief strength of the state. And certainly the neglect of this old Persian system of education was one of the primary causes of the decline of the empire-a decline which the progressive relaxation and corruption of public morals accelerated with a fearful rapidity. After the first mighty impulse, and that severe moral character which Cyrus had imparted to Persia, had disappeared, the same fate befel this empire, as has befallen all the great Oriental monarchies. The same evils, which the domination of provincial satraps-a government of the seraglio -invariably bring along with it-the factions, the conspiracies, the changes of dynasty, and the other disorders incident to * In the German "Lichtsage," or Tradition of Light.-Trans.

despotism, appear in exactly similar colours in the Persian annals; and even in the modern kingdom of Persia, we find many of those characteristic traits or usages of Asiatic government as they existed in the ancient empire. Even the army, for the most part, consisted of troops levied out of the conquered nations, and the greater were its numbers, the less internal union did it possess. Hence we can well conceive that a small army of Greeks, animated by patriotic valour, and commanded by generals possessed of a true tactical eye and genius, were able to oppose to the immense hosts of Persia a resistance, which, in a numerical point of view, appears almost incredible, and were even enabled to gain unexpected victories over their enemies. We can conceive too, how, in the time of Alexander the Great, three battles should have decided the fate of this great empire; for its moral life and energy were gone, and the pillars of the state were completely decayed.

The Persian empire lasted but for the short period of two hundred and twenty years, from its foundation by Cyrus, to the reign of the last Darius, whose personal character and fate leave such an affecting and tragical impression on our minds. The universal conquests of the Persians, rapid, but transient, acted on the age with all the violence of the elemental powers of nature. Sudden and rapid, like a wind-storm, they invaded and subdued all other states and kingdoms :-the expedition of Xerxes into Greece was a real inundation of nations—and as the destructive fire, after blazing on high and desolating and consuming all things around, sinks quickly again-it was so with the Persian empire. The dominion of the Persians exerted no very permanent influence on those other nations whose civilisation was anterior to their own. Egypt, in despite of the violent persecution which she sustained under Cambyses, remained still the ancient Egypt-and with yet greater fidelity did she cling to her ancient customs, under the milder sway the Ptolemies, whose government was so much more congenial to her spirit and character. Phoenicia, Palestine, and Asia Minor, also remained essentially unchanged. In an historical point of view, the main result of the Persian conquests was this-they brought the nations of Western Asia and of Egypt into a close contact, and a very active and permanent intercourse with the states of Greece, and those situated on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Persian dominion, and the contest

of

of that power with Greece, had indeed a very great, though only indirect, influence on the latter country, inasmuch as it favoured the growth and development of Grecian liberty, and at a later period produced the great reaction under Alexander the Great. This Greek re-action was, in its spirit and character, somewhat similar to the previous irruption and ambitious invasion of the Persians; in Alexander at least, we can clearly discover an Oriental spirit, that not content with the narrow boundaries of his hereditary kingdom of Macedon, sought to transcend the sphere of Hellenic civilisation, Hellenic doctrines, and Hellenic modes of thinking. And I call that an Asiatic enthusiasm which, with resistless impetuosity, bore away the Macedonian to the capital of Persia, and even beyond the banks of the Indus.

END OF LECTURE VII.

LECTURE VIII.

Variety of Grecian Life and Intellect-State of Education and of the Fine Arts among the Greeks-The Origin of their Philosophy and Natural Science-Their Political Degeneracy.

It would be difficult to point out a more striking difference, a more decided opposition in the whole circle of the intellectual and moral character and habits of nations, as far at least as the sphere of known history extends, than that which exists between the seclusive and monotonous character of Asiatic intellect the generally unchangeable uniformity of Oriental manners and Oriental society, and the manifold activity-the varied life of the Greeks, in the first flourishing ages of their history. This amazing diversity in the moral and intellectual habits of the Greeks appears not only in their legislation, their forms of government, their manners, occupations, and usages of life, but in their various and widely dispersed settlements and colonies, in their descent, which was composed of so many heterogeneous elements, in the first seeds of their civilisation -as well as their distribution into hostile tribes and great and petty states, and even in their traditions, their history, and the arts and forms of art to which those gave rise-finally, in a science, engaged in incessant strife, and marching from system to system, amid the noise and tumult of opposition. In Asia, even in those countries such as India, where the poetry, the views of life, and the systems of philosophy were extremely various, and bore in this respect an external resemblance to those of Greece; where even the country in ancient times was never permanently united into one compact empire; yet the whole way of thinking, the prevalent feeling, was entirely monarchical, proceeding from, and returning again to, unchangeable unity. On the other hand, in Greece, science, like life itself, was thoroughly republican-and if we meet with particular thinkers, who leaned to this Asiatic doctrine of unity,

we must regard this as only an exception-a system adopted from a love of change, or out of a spirit of opposition to the vulgar and generally received opinion that all in nature and the world, as well as in man, was in a state of perpetual movement, constant change, and freedom of life. Even the fabulous world of Grecian divinities, as it has been painted by their poets, has a republican cast; for there every thing is in a state of change, of successive renovation, and of mutual collision in the war of nature's elements, in the hostility of old and new deities-of the superior and inferior gods-of giants and of heroes-presenting, as it does, a state of poetical anarchy. Hence, even the historical traditions of the Greeks, and the first accounts of their early seats, settlements, and the migrations of their different races, present to the eye of the historical inquirer a dense forest of truth and fiction, of fanciful conjecture, absolute fable, and ancient and venerable knowledge-a labyrinth of poetry and of history, in whose various and intricate mazes it is often difficult for the critic to find the true outlet, and to hold fast by the guiding clue of Ariadne, when he wishes to adopt a lucid arrangement, and assign to each part its due place in the system of the whole. The Greek tribes and nations inhabited not only the proper Greece, the Peninsula Peloponnesian, the contiguous islands, the southern plains of the Continent (on whose northern frontiers it is often difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the tribes of Greek and foreign extraction); and also the western coasts of Asia Minor; but they had founded a number of small states and planted many flourishing colonies in the remotest corners of the Euxine, in the Lower Egypt, where, long prior to the Persian wars, many Greek settlements existed-along the northern shore of Africa, where the flourishing Cyrene was situated, on the southern coasts of Spain and Gaul, in Sicily, and throughout the whole of Southern Italy. Their navigation extended even to the Baltic, as the voyage of Pytheas evinces; and, though they did not circumnavigate Africa,-a thing which it is still doubtful whether the Phoenicians accomplished, they rather surpassed than yielded to the latter nation in the activity of their trade, and the wealth and extent of their colonies. The stupendous monuments and edifices of the Egyptians are indeed of more colossal dimensions; yet the works of Grecian sculpture and archi