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 appears, 
unceasingly to have viewed with undiminished ad- 
