the most considerable in Persia, says Cotys. Ariæus, when offered the sovereignty by Clearchus and the ten thousand Greeks, refused it as of too low a rank, and said that so many eminent Persians would never endure his rule (_id._, _De exped._ lib. 2). Some of the families, descended from the seven Persians above mentioned, remained during all Alexander’s successors; and Mithridates, in Antiochus’s time, is said by Polybius to be descended from one of them (lib. 5, cap. 43). Artabazus was esteemed, as Arrian says, εν τοις πρωτοις Περσων (lib. 3). And when Alexander married in one day eighty of his captains to Persian women, his intention plainly was to ally the Macedonians with the most eminent Persian families (_id._, lib. 7). Diodorus Siculus says they were of the most noble birth in Persia (lib. 17). The government of Persia was despotic, and conducted in many respects after the Eastern manner, but was not carried so far as to extirpate all nobility, and confound all ranks and orders. It left men who were still great, by themselves and their family, independent of their office and commission. And the reason why the Macedonians kept so easily dominion over them was owing to other causes easy to be found in the historians, though it must be owned that Machiavel’s reasoning was in itself just, however doubtful its application to the present case. [115] What our author’s opinion was of the famous minister here pointed at may be learned from that essay, printed in the former editions, under the title of “A Character of Sir Robert Walpole.” It was as follows:—“There never was a man whose actions and character have been more earnestly and openly canvassed than those of the present minister, who, having governed a learned and free nation for so long a time, amidst such mighty opposition, may make a large library of what has been written for and against him, and is the subject of above half the paper that has been blotted in the nation within these twenty years. I wish, for the honour of our country, that any one character of him had been drawn with such judgment and impartiality as to have credit with posterity, and to show that our liberty has, once at least, been employed to good purpose. I am only afraid of failing in the former quality of judgment; but if it should be so, it is but one page more thrown away, after a hundred thousand, upon the same subject, that have perished and become useless. In the meantime, I shall flatter myself with the pleasing imagination that the following character will be adopted by future historians:—