of the Assyrian Monarchy. 305 
M. that I shall content myself with referring 
to that work.(°) Dr. Gillies, indeed, in his 
history of the world 1.—62, endeavours to 
account for this silence by saying, that “ the 
arrangements of Ninus were ‘adopted by a 
line of seventeen princes, whose mild and pa- 
cific reigns leaving no trace of blood behind 
them, have escaped the notice of history.” 
But if the authority of Ctesias and Eusebius 
is good, for seventeen successors to Ninus, 
it is good for six-and-tbirty ; and to drop all 
the revolting and improbable circumstances 
in a narrative, of whose truth we have no 
evidence but those very historians with whom 
we take this liberty, is not to extract history 
from fable, but merely to change an extrava- 
gant fable into a moderate one. Facts are 
not therefore true, because they are credible. 
But the shortened account of Dr. Gillies, is 
not even credible; if we could believe that 
seventeen kings in succession, sat on the 
throne of an Asiatic monarchy, in those rude 
early times, in a country remarkable for the 
rapidity of its political changes, within the 
limits of ascertained history ; and that their 
reigns furnished not a single fact interesting 
enough to be recorded, we might believe it 
of twice seventeen. If the centuries which 
thus rolled away were centuries of peaceful 
VOL. UL. aq 
