called the FOUR GREAT MONARCHIES. They were, doubtless, extensive, and too extensive for justice, happiness, or permanence; but in that age both geography and civilization were limited, and all that can be said is, that they included the narrow limits of both.

Spain, however, has had far more extensive dominions in its American provinces than either of the four monarchies; Russia is four times the size of either of them; and even the territories in the four quarters of the world subject to the British crown, either before the separation of the American States, or since the Hindostan conquests, double in extent the size of those famed monarchies.

These four empires were Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

The first, founded by Nimrod, owed its distinction to the ambition of a woman named Semiramis, who lived about 1800 years before Christ. Having dethroned and killed her husband, she placed herself at the head of numerous armies, and overran the then known world, afterwards finished Babylon in all its splendour, and built other cities. Her son conspired her death, but she was afterwards worshipped, and her empire lasted above 1200 years, being terminated by Cyrus, and blended with the Persian empire in 546 B. C. The countries which formed this once famous and splendid empire are now thinly peopled and sterile. Babylon itself, consisting of hills of confused ruins on the river Euphrates, and the Tower of Babel, being a shapeless mass. Nineveh, another city nearly equal to Babylon, fifteen miles long and nine broad, with walls 100 feet high, on which three chariots could pass, is now a heap of ruins on the Tigris. Both places, and the empire itself, are now gloomy displays of the vanity of all human pomp.

On the ruins of the Assyrian empire rose the kingdom of Media, but in 559 B. C. Cyrus, on the

union of both, and by other conquests, founded the PERSIAN EMPIRE, which included central and western Asia, Egypt, and other neighbouring countries.

In 330 the Greeks, to avenge aggressions of the Persians, united under Alexander, and invading Persia, Darius its king was defeated, Babylon taken, and a new Greek or MACEDONIAN EMPIRE founded, which, however, tumbled in pieces after the death of Alexander, in 323.

His generals founded several independent kingdoms, all of which fell under the power of the Romans, who, in the two centuries before Christ, after the fall of their rival Carthage, conquered the whole known world, not only in Asia and Africa, but in Europe also, founding the fourth universal empire, which lasted till 1453, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the eastern empire terminated. The bishop of Rome, as pope, still however, maintains a temporal, as well as a more extended spiritual power.

The kingdoms of modern Europe are mostly formed on the ruins of the Roman empire, and Asia is now in the power of the Mahometans, as Turks, Persians, and Arabs.

China, Japan, India, Russia, and Tartary, have not been connected with this chain of history; but their own histories, particularly that of China, are deeply interesting; and in the thirteenth century a Tartar, Genghis Khan, overran, amidst rivers of blood, nearly all Asia, on which a successor in the fourteenth century, Tamerlane, or Timur Bek, by bloody conquests, founded a fifth monarchy; but he died in 1405, while engaged in preparations for invading China, and his empire fell to pieces like that of Alexander.

The last semblance of universal monarchy was in our time, when Napoleon Bonaparte, as Emperor of the French, overran Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and from the Atlantic to the Adriatic but, like Cyrus and Charles XII., he lost his army in

the deserts of Russia, and being overthrown by united Europe, he died a captive at St. Helena.

LETTER LXIII.

Literature and Science of the Ancients.

MY DEAR CHILDREN,

Let us turn, however, from the dominion over mountains, plains, rivers, marshes, woods, and deserts to man. What were the fruits of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Median, and Persian Empires? All belonging to them have totally passed away. Perhaps, however, they contributed many tens or hundreds to the thousand little steps, by which men ascend from woods and caverns, to splendid cities, and to the arts of gorgeous life. We hear only of some sovereigns in a long line, for even of these vain personages, the chief part are forgotten! We have on record, a Zoroaster, and a Berosus, philosophers and astrologers who lived in these countries, and astronomy was carried among them to high perfection. We know, too, that the early Greeks travelled into the Eastern countries in search of wisdom, and the evangelists speak of the men of the East as wise; but of the individuals who excelled we have no record, and the history of sixty generations of millions of men inhabiting the finest portions of the globe in these mighty empires, may now be comprised in a few pages. In religion they worshipped the sun, under the name of Bel, or Baal; and fire, as his local representative, or image on earth.

The GREEKS, by cultivating letters and literature, placed their fame on imperishable foundations. We know, however, little of Homer and of Pytha

goras, and some doubt whether there ever were such men. The Greeks borrowed the arts of the ancient empires of Assyria and Egypt, and either improved on them, or displayed them in such way, that they have through them reached posterity, which again has further improved and expanded them. Its history records twenty philosophers of the first class, as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaxander, Plato, Aristotle, Solon, Socrates, Epicurus, &c.; with many pocts and writers of the first genius, as Homer, or the author of his poems, Hesiod, Pindar, Sappho, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Esop, Epictetus, &c.

In government and war they had Pericles, Aristides, Epaminondas, Themistocles, Phocian, Cimon, Alexander the Great, Lycurgus, &c. &c. In Sculpture they had Phidias, Praxiteles, &c. and to them we are indebted for the orders of architecture, in which they perfected the massive and showy works of the orientals and Egyptians.

The Romans seized again on the arts and literature of the Greeks, and in gratifying their rapacious passion for conquest, they scattered those arts to the Baltic, and the confines of Scotland. Imitating the Greeks, just as the moderns imitate both Greeks and Romans, they acquired less distinction in learning, though fifty or sixty generations, of one hundred millions of men, produced great excellence and much improvement. They excelled chiefly in the destructive arts of war, and Roman celebrity is founded chiefly on their display. Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Livy, Cicero, Cæsar, Lucretius, &c. &c. will however preserve veneration for the name of Rome, when the pride of her conquerors, and the vices of her aristocracy and her sovereigns, are justly despised or forgotten.

The history of these Empires, and of the intellectual progress of man, proves that the human character is only to be drawn out by circumstances, and

that it is capable of every excellence if duly encouraged. All its brilliancy has been displayed at single epochs. Some wise sovereign, some wealthy patron, some intellectual statesman, some lucky warrior, some heroic patriot, starting forward in any age, has given a direction and energy to the pursuits of that age, and shown the variety and extent of human powers. Happy would it be if all princes and powers felt and acted on this great truth.

LETTER LXIV.

Progress of Civilization in Britain.

MY ESTEEMED Children,

Having given you these general ideas on the subject of history, I would draw your attention to that of your own country, of which none of you ought to be ignorant. Here the Interrogative System will aid you, and with Robinson's Abridgment of the Standard Histories by Hume and Smollet, and the Questions on the same, you will soon be familiar with the past history of this great empire.

It is not necessary that I should repeat what is in so common a book; but I may not improperly give you a sketch of the progress of society and manners, from a state of rudeness and barbarism to the present exalted state of refinement.

The origin of most nations in Europe, and of most of the great kingdoms in the world, seems to have been much the same. A savage and uncivilized race without laws, without arts, and with-out commerce, living in little petty independent states, first peopled each country. These were invaded, and driven out, or conquered, by more warlike, and generally by more civilized people; and small states have been formed, or colonies