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conduct by his partial biographers ; but none are adequate to his 

 vindication. To strike a degree of awe and veneration into the 

 minds of his new subjects, though it might be necessary for Alex- 

 ander to affect the pomp and splendour which distinguished the 

 court of the ancient sovereigns of the Persian empire, it was by no 

 means necessary that he should disgrace it by unbounded luxury 

 and continued intemperance. That fatal rock, on which he knew 

 their power had been so recently wrecked, ought to have kept him 

 steady in the rigid practice of Macedonian temperance; and he 

 ought to have made the great Cyrus the founder, and the first Darius 

 the establisher, and not the last, the subverter, by his effeminacy, 

 of that vast empire, the bright exemplar of his conduct. Hardy 

 and inflexible in the field, Avhen surrounded by numerous and 

 active enemies, in the face of danger and on the verge of death, 

 when the strongest cities were to be besieged, the loftiest mountains 

 to be crossed, and the deepest rivers to be forded, Alexander was 

 invincible ; but, the instant he was seated on the throne of Darius, he 

 seems to have forfeited that superior title, his virtue and his forti- 

 tude, by which he gained possession of it; and, in the moment of 

 victory, became vanquished. Thus inconsistent is MAN, the victim 

 of contending passions, the sport of endless vicissitudes ; MAN, who 

 seems to be conspicuously placed on the great theatre of time, to be- 

 come the successive object of respect and of commiseration; a 

 spectacle of alternate admiration and derision ! 



This general relaxation, however, in point of morals and discipline, 

 was not accompanied with any relaxation of vigorous exertion in 

 regard to the great and ultimate object of Alexander's ambition. 

 An attentive view of the situation of Babylon, near the confluence 

 of two noble rivers rolling from the centre of civilized Asia into 

 the great Eastern ocean, and in an abundant and delightful pro- 

 vince, convinced him, that on that spot alone should stand the im- 



