MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 37 



the sentiments with which his master had inspired 

 him, spared the house of Pindar in the sack of 

 Thebes ; and that, in his expedition against the Per- 

 sians, the town of Eressus in Lesbos was exempted 

 from the fate of other conquered cities, because it 

 was the birth-place of Theophrastus and Phasias, two 

 of Aristotle's disciples. 



Alexander was in his sixteenth year when he was 

 placed under the tuition of the Stagirite, the most in- 

 teresting period of life for moulding and confirming 

 the future character of the man. In training such a 

 youth, he had a rich field to cultivate, although the 

 precocity of his intellect had in some degree out- 

 stript the unripeness of his years, and thus made it 

 difficult for an instructor, however skilful, to alter or 

 eradicate impressions which had almost settled down 

 into fixed principles. The ambition of Alexander 

 had early taken root, and the peculiarities of his ge- 

 nius had already manifested themselves in certain 

 public and very important transactions at his father's 

 court. When his lofty notions of conquest and his 

 premature love of aggrandisement are taken into ac- 

 count, it may well be supposed that these juvenile 

 passions would sometimes prove too headstrong to 

 be governed or restrained by the voice of reason, 

 speaking even from the mouth of an admired philo- 

 sopher. Although many shared in the love and 

 esteem of the youthful prince, Aristotle is the only 

 one of his friends whose superior genius he appear* 

 unceasingly to have viewed with undiminished ad- 



