scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. All antecedent human parallels--the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition--sunk into trifles compared with the overthrow of the towering Persian Colossus. Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B.C., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian Empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once made the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont. Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old--the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements with such increased means and experience were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and, if his life had been prolonged, he probably would have accomplished it.