civilization. Yet the nature of the oriental government did not fail
to operate injuriously on the more homely and useful directions of
their energy. They appear never to have worked the gold-mines, whose
particles were borne to them by the careless bounty of the Pactolus.
Their early traditional colonies were wafted on Grecian vessels. The
gorgeous presents with which they enriched the Hellenic temples seem
to have been fabricated by Grecian art, and even the advantages of
commerce they seem rather to have suffered than to have sought. But
what a people so suddenly risen into splendour, governed by a wise
prince, and stimulated perhaps to eventual liberty by the example of
the European Greeks, ought to have become, it is impossible to
conjecture; perhaps the Hellenes of the East.

At this period, however, of such power--and such promise, the fall of
the Lydian empire was decreed. Far from the fertile fields and
gorgeous capital of Lydia, amid steril mountains, inhabited by a
simple and hardy race, rose the portentous star of the Persian Cyrus.

X. A victim to that luxury which confirms a free but destroys a
despotic state, the vast foundations of the Assyrian empire were
crumbling into decay, when a new monarchy, destined to become its
successor, sprung up among one of its subject nations. Divided into
various tribes, each dependant upon the Assyrian sceptre, was a
warlike, wandering, and primitive race, known to us under the name of
Medes. Deioces, a chief of one of the tribes, succeeded in uniting
these scattered sections into a single people, built a city, and
founded an independent throne. His son, Phraortes, reduced the
Persians to his yoke--overran Asia--advanced to Nineveh--and
ultimately perished in battle with a considerable portion of his army.
Succeeded by his son Cyaxares, that monarch consummated the ambitious