manners.

been ever since held up as an awful warning to those who venture to depart even a hair's breadth from the ancient At an earlier period, under the dynasty of Tsin (248-206 B. c.), China first received religion from India; but the missionaries were not artful or prudent enough to adapt it to Chinese maxims of state, and they were unsuccessful in the contest between them and the learned. At a later period, when the Buddhism of India had become the Lamaism of Tibet, it entered China as the religion of Foë, and by the worldly prudence of its bonzes or priests, succeeded in gaining a favourable reception and becoming the religion of the state. Every thing that hopes for success in this country must fall in with the national character. China has often been overcome, and its reigning dynasty changed; but the manners and institutions of China remain unaltered, as different from those of the Caucasian race as the features of the Chinese face are from those of the European.

India.

From the Chinese, a nation of cold reason, almost no religion, monosyllabic unharmonious language, and literature full of events and valuable matter, we pass to their neighbours of India, whom every thing but colour indicates to belong to the same family with the Europeans. Here we find glowing fancy, and in Brahmanism a luxuriant system of religion, a majestic and richly inflected language, and a literature full to exuberance of the highest poetry. But India has no history or chronology of its own, and it is in the time of the Persian kings that it first appears in the history of the world. Yet the testimony of antiquity, its proximity to the original land of the Caucasian race, and the primitive character of its social institutions, prove it to be one of the most ancient nations of the earth.

In India, religion and priestly influence have effected what law and tradition have produced in China-the absolute prostration of the intellect of the nation.

The

system of castes sets a bar to all ambition and to all energy. No development of mind can take place where every man's station in life is immutably marked out for him. The nation presents at the present day the same spectacle which excited the wonder of the Greeks who accompanied Alexander; an immense, gentle, and peaceful population; abundance of wealth; all the useful, necessary, and ornamental arts of life; a manifold, intricate system of religion, abounding in rites and ceremonies, many of them of the most lascivious character.

Like China, India is an instance of the fatal effect of checking the free development of mind: here, too, every thing is stationary. The love of country is a feeling unknown to the breast of the inhabitants, and India has been at all periods the easy prey of every invader whom its wealth attracted. Omitting the fabulous expeditions of Sesostris and Semiramis, the earliest account we have of a conquest of any part of this country is of that by Cyrus and Darius I., kings of Persia; next Alexander the Great with ease overthrew all that opposed him, and, but for the refusal of his troops, would have planted his standards on the banks of the Ganges. Seleucus Nicator ruled over the provinces conquered by Alexander, reached in conquest the banks of the Jumnah, and subdued a large portion of Bengal. When the feeble successors of Seleucus had lost their power over other subject nations, their vicegerents were still obeyed during a period of 60 years by a great part of India. A hundred and twenty years after the death of Alexander, Antiochus the Great invaded and conquered a considerable portion of India; and when he was overcome by the Romans, all his possessions west of the Indus fell to Euthydemus, the Grecian sovereign of Bactria, and India cheerfully obeyed him. He was unable to effect the succession of his son Demetrius in Bactria; but over the Indian provinces that prince reigned without opposition. Eucratides, the fifth of the Græco-Bactrian kings, re-united to Bactria the Indian possessions, and every succeeding reigning line in Persia had dominions in India, till it was eventually

overrun and occupied by Mohammedan conquerors. For the last thousand years it has been the prey of every foreign spoiler. Thus India seems destined never to enjoy national independence: her countless millions doomed for ever to bow beneath a foreign sceptre, she stands an instructive monument of the evils resulting from fettered intellect and priestly dominion.

CHAP. II.

THE ANCIENT STATES OF CENTRAL AND WESTERN ASIA.

Bactria.

ACCORDING to the traditions of hoary antiquity preserved in the sacred books of the Parsees, and in the Shah Nameh, the immortal poem of Ferdoosee, there existed in the most remote ages, with sacerdotal institutions akin to those of India, a mighty and extensive empire in Bactria or Eastern Persia. Grecian writers confirm this account, and it is farther proved by the route of the Caucasian race, who, in their progress along the mountains, inust have been attracted by these fertile regions, abounding in every production, protected by lofty impassable mountains to the north, and bordering on the realms of India and Babylonia. The branch of the Caucasian stem, called the Indo-Persian race, spread over Iran, the country between Babylonia and India. Its chief seat was Bactria. Here, according to Persian tradition, ruled Cayumarath, the first of men, or of kings, and his descendants, till Jemsheed was overthrown by the Aramæan Zohak. The system of religion named from Zoroaster prevailed in Bactria, and the sacerdotal caste stood in rights and privileges nearly on a par with the Bramins of India, who, probably, possessed originally a similar institution. The idolatrous Aramæan priesthood united itself with that of Bactria; but when the Aramæan or Babylonian dominion sank, and the

Iranian revived in the person of Feridoon, the old religion recovered its dominion. Changes of dynasty affected it not; it passed to Medes and Persians, and still was flourishing when the disciples of Mohammed extinguished it in blood; and it yet lingers among the Parsees of India, the descendants of those who sought refuge in that country from persecution. But the simple religion of Zoroaster, which worshipped under the emblem of light and fire the Author of life and happiness, had not the debasing effects of the intricate idolatry and metaphysics of India; and if Iran fell beneath foreign conquerors, the fault was not in her system of religion.

Babylon and Assyria.

We now begin to tread on more solid ground, for in the earliest portion of the far most credible ancient history, that of the Hebrews, we observe a recognition of the empires of Babylon and Assyria. From them, too, we may infer, that Babylon was the more ancient, for the city of that name is mentioned at a time while the Hebrews were still in the nomadic state. We hear not till long after of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital on the Tigris.

The Babylonians dwelt on the Tigris and the Lower Euphrates, and their industry had made their land the garden of Asia. They were a peaceful people, as is shown by their manufactures and their provisions for watering their lands. Herodotus describes them as a luxurious trafficking people, fond of splendid dress and ornaments. Various dynasties of kings of the surrounding nations are related to have ruled in Babylon. This wealthy state must have been at all times exposed to the incursions of the nomadic tribes that surrounded it, and sometimes conquered by them. The city is stated to have been built in the most remote ages by the god Bel, and to have been enlarged and adorned by Semiramis, probably also a mythic personage. In the historic period we find it farther improved and adorned by Nebuchadnezzar and the queen Nitocris. The reign of Nebu

chadnezzar was the most brilliant period of Babylon. He ruled from the foot of Caucasus to the deserts of Libya. Judæa, Phoenicia, Egypt, all the tribes of the desert, did homage to his power. But the glory was transient: in the reign of his son the Babylonian dominion sank, never to rise, beneath the arms of the Medes and Persians.

The Assyrian empire on the Tigris and the Upper Euphrates rose much later than the Babylonian, which it subdued, but which under the father of Nebuchadnezzar cast off the yoke, and attained the power we have just described. Of the Assyrian history little is known.

A caste of priests named Chaldeans, distinguished for their knowledge of the order and courses of the heavenly bodies, the objects of Babylonian worship, was to be found here; but the early establishment of despotism permitted not a division of the people into any other castes. These Chaldeans were divided into several orders under a head appointed by the king. Birth was

not a necessary qualification for admittance into their body. We find (as in the case of Daniel) Jews placed in the highest rank among them. They derived their support from lands assigned to them. The nature of the occupations of the Babylonians made a race of men of importance, who pretended to a knowledge of the ways of the gods, who measured the land, marked the seasons, and announced the hours of good and evil fortune: yet almost all their boasted wisdom was mere jugglery and deceit.

Egypt.*

The valley watered by the Nile, and inclosed between the desert on the west, and barren mountains on the east, was the seat of one of the earliest and most renowned empires of which we have any record remaining. A branch of the Caucasian race, it would appear, crossed the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. It mastered the Æthiopians whom it met, and founded an empire on the

Egypt, though properly in Africa, has been included in this chapter, to avoid needless subdivision.