formidable situation in which he had placed himself, and through great good fortune succeeded in effecting it. He crossed the sea just in time; for the Scythians came down in pursuit, as far as the coast, and returned home laden with booty. This is pretty much all that is definitely recorded in history of the ancient Tartars. Alexander, in a later age, came into conflict with them in the region called Sogdiana which lies at the foot of that high plateau of central and eastern Asia, which I have designated as their proper home. But he was too prudent to be entangled in extended expeditions against them, and having made trial of their formidable strength, and made some demonstrations of the superiority of his own, he left them in possession of their wildernesses. FOOTNOTES: [1] Isai. xli. 25: Jer. i. 14; vi. 1, 22; Joel ii. 20; etc., etc. [2] Gibbon. [3] Gibbon. [4] Caldecott's Baber. [5] Vid. Mitford's Greece, vol. viii. p. 86. [6] Pritchard's Researches. LECTURE II. _The Tartars._ 1. If anything needs be added to the foregoing account, in illustration of the natural advantages of the Scythian or Tartar position, it is the circumstance that the shepherds of the Ukraine were divided in their counsels when Darius made war against them, and that only a portion of their tribes coalesced to repel his invasion. Indeed, this internal discord, which is the ordinary characteristic of races so barbarous, and the frequent motive of their migrations, is the cause why in ancient times they were so little formidable to their southern neighbours; and it suggests a remark to the philosophical historian, Thucydides, which, viewed in the light of subsequent history, is almost prophetic. "As to the Scythians," he says, "not only no European nation, but not even any Asiatic, would be able to measure itself with them, nation with nation, were they but of one mind." Such was the safeguard of civilization in ancient times; in modern unhappily it has disappeared. Not unfrequently, since the Christian era, the powers of the North have been under one sovereign, sometimes even for a series of years; and have in consequence been brought into combined action against the South; nay, as time has gone on, they have been thrown into more and more formidable combinations, with more and more disastrous consequences to its prosperity. Of these northern coalitions or Empires, there have been three, nay five, which demand our especial attention both from their size and their historical importance.