44 
THE PERSIAN CHARACTER. 
seems to contend with inclination, in accomplishing its fulfilment. 
In short, this pliant, polished steel of character, so different from 
the sturdy nature and stubborn uses of the iron sons of the north, 
fit the Persians to be at once a great, a happy, and a peaceable 
people, under a legitimate and well-ordered monarchy. Of what 
good they are capable, has been proved under the rule of Cyrus ; 
to what evil they may be perverted, the same biographer testifies 
in his account of the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon; and nearly the 
same form of government, whether under Guebre or Mahomedan, 
has continued until this day. The effects of the Mahomedan 
creed of fatalism, upon the conduct of its followers, whether as 
subjects or men, we may all comprehend, because we daily see it 
before our eyes ; but what might have been the political influ¬ 
ences of the Guebre faith, we have no opportunity here of judg¬ 
ing ; the few remains of that degraded race being no more a 
people. 
When, towards the middle of the seventh century, the Caliph 
Omar sent his merciless Arabs over the Euphrates, to force a 
passage into Persia, they found the monarchy enfeebled by the 
distracting interests of several pretenders, and the people either 
absorbed in self-indulgence, or exhausted by the exactions of 
so many claimants. Yezdijird, doomed to be the last of the Mi- 
thratic kings, as he was of the line of Sassan, vainly opposed the 
torrent of an invasion, urged at once by hope of earthly dominion 
and a heavenly paradise. He collected an army of a hundred 
thousand men, but the ancient discipline of his brave ancestors 
had long been lost, and the greatest number of these raw troops 
perished in the field of Kudseah. In the heat of battle, Saad 
Ben Wakass, the Arab commander, was so lucky as to take the 
Durufsh-i-kawanee, the standard which for centuries had been 
