OF SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. 



4n 



And thus a greater than Dryden, in his Well-known poiem, entitled VAU 

 l^gro— 



And ever against eating cares 



Lap me in soft Lydian airs ; 



In notes with many a winding bout 



Of linked sweetness long drawn out ; 



With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, 



The melting voice through mazes running, 



Untwisting all the chains that tie 



The hidden soul of harmony. 



Such, in most parts of the world, has been the effect of climate and stir.*, 

 mounding scenery. But there is another cause, and a still more powerful 

 one, that ought not to be admitted in the consideration of national cha- 

 racter ; an^ that is the government and habits of a people. 



These may, in the first instance, be produced by accident ; they may^ 

 be the result of the cause already adverted to ; but, when once formed and 

 established, they lay a much firmer basis for public feeling and conduct 

 than can be derived from any physical impulse whatever. 



Persia had at one time as much reason as Macedonia to boast of her 

 military hardihood and heroism ; and, under the guidance of Cyrus, is 

 well known to have overrun all Egypt and Asia Minor, taken Babylon, 

 and destroyed the Assyrian empire. But her government at that time was 

 most excellent ; her code of laws full of wisdom ; her administration of 

 justice exemplary ; and her morals the simplest and most correct in the 

 Pagan world. Her youth, from the age of seven to that of seventeen, 

 were allowed no other food than bread and cresses, and no other drink 

 than water. They were all educated at public schools, provided by the 

 state, and superintended by masters of the highest character for sobriety 

 and science ; who were enjoined by the constitution to use every means 

 of inspiring them with a love of virtue for iiS own sake, and an equal ab- 

 horrence of vice. With the exception qf the Macedonians, the Persians 

 are the only people who enacted a law against ingratitude, punishing witk 

 a brand on the forehead every one who was convicted of so heinous a 

 crinie ; a regulation ^hich, I shrewdly suspect, if carried into execution 

 in the present day, would wofully disfigure the faces of great multitudes 

 of our contemporaries. The ear of the prince, moreover, was open to 

 the advice of every one, but with this salutary limitation, to prevent the 

 royal presence from being pestered with political busy-bodies : the adviser 

 in proposing his opinion was placed upon an ingot of gold ; if his coun- 

 sel were found useful, the ingot was his reward 5 if trifling, or of no value, 

 his reward was a public whipping. 



So long as this system of simplicity and political jurisprudence con- 

 tinued, the Persians were the most powerful people in the world ; but the 

 temptations of a warm luxurious climate, and the influx of enormous 

 wealth, from the conquest of surrounding Countries, threw them gradually 

 off their guard ; their disciphne became relaxed, their laws slighted, their 

 manners changed ; and the nation which was able to conquer Phrygia, 

 Lydia, Egypt, and the proud empire of Assyria, not two centuries after- 

 wards, fell prostrate before an army of little more than thirty thousand 

 Greeks, under the banners of Alexander the Great. 



If we turn our attention to the Greeks who triumphed on this proud 

 occasion, their whole history will furnish us with a repetition of the same 

 lesson. 'J'lic mildness of their climate, the luxuriance of their soil, the 

 }>icturesqvi.e beautv of tiseir country, attuned all the rougher passions to 



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