which they exact from their family and dependants in their
domestic economy." We should bear in mind also the inseparable
connexion between the state religion and all legislation, which
has always prevailed in the East, and the constant existence of a
powerful sacerdotal body, exercising some check, though
precarious and irregular, over the throne itself, grasping at all
civil administration, claiming the supreme control of education,
stereotyping the lines in which literature and science must move,
and limiting the extent to which it shall be lawful for the human
mind to prosecute its inquiries.

With these general characteristics rightly felt and understood.
it becomes a comparatively easy task to investigate and
appreciate the origin, progress, and principles of Oriental
empires in general, as well as of the Persian monarchy in
particular. And we are thus better enabled to appreciate the
repulse which Greece gave to the arms of the East, and to judge
of the probable consequences to human civilization, if the
Persians had succeeded in bringing Europe under their yoke, as
they had already subjugated the fairest portions of the rest of
the then known world.

The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural
vanguard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they
pre-eminently displayed the salient points of distinctive
national character, which have rendered European civilization so
far superior to Asiatic. The nations that dwelt in ancient times
around and near the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea,
were the first in our continent to receive from the East the
rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of social and