14 
BAHARAM GOUR. 
filling the whole earth with fragrance for ever!” are fraught with 
highly interesting facts, as well as marvellously romantic legends. 
Educated, by the command of his royal father, by an Arab 
chief, he acquired all the simplicity and hardihood of that 
dauntless people; adding to their rough virtues, many which 
seem to belong to the most polished states of civilization alone. 
Education, perhaps, does almost every thing with mankind in 
general; and most men are, therefore, just what the existing 
manners of their country make them: but we find that in all 
ages, certain eminent human beings have been given to the 
world, princes or sages, born with extraordinary mental and 
moral powers, to be at once teachers and examples. Such were 
Numa, and Alfred ; and such was Baharam Gour, a heathen 
prince in the fifth century, but one whose noble disposition could 
happily apply the fine practical lesson taught him by Acacius, 
the truly Christian bishop of Amida. During the wars between 
Baharam and the emperor Theodosius, many brave Persians 
were taken prisoners, and carried into bondage to Constan¬ 
tinople. When the two sovereigns ended their hostilities by a 
truce of a hundred years, Acacius declared to his emperor, 
that “ vases of gold and silver were less precious ornaments 
of the church, in his eyes and those of God, than justice and 
mercy;” and therefore selling the church plate, “he employed the 
money it produced (continues the historian) in the redemption 
of seven thousand Persian captives; supplied their wants 
with commiserating liberality, and dismissed them to their 
native country, to inform Baharam of the true spirit of that 
religion against whose followers he had raised his arms.” The 
valour, clemency, and generosity of the Persian monarch, are 
the theme of every Persian pen ; his munificence not being 
limited to favourites at court, nor to its mere vicinity, but ex- 
