The race has survived the destruction of Babylon and Assyria--outlived the beautiful gods of the Greeks, who beat them down by land and sea. It has persistently overcome the hatred and persecution of the Scythian and Tartar hordes, the rage and fury of the Moslems, the intolerance and prejudice of all sects and nations, and, strange to say, even when placed between the currents of new ideas, which ceaselessly move and transform those around them, the Fire-worshipper, like the Jew, stands alone, as if he were beyond time and above change. From the time of Xerxes, four hundred and eighty-six years B. C., we have to date the decline of the Persian empire. Even the old heroic name of Iran--Ayiran, from the Sanskrit Ariya, "the noble"--has passed away for the word Persia, which, whether we apply it to the country, to the people, or to the language, is a misnomer. Pars, or Fars, is only a province of the great empire of "Iran." It was owing to the fact that the language of its chief city, Shiraz, was considered the most elegant and fashionable speech of the Iranians that the name of the province Pars was gradually used to distinguish the people, the entire country, and the language. To the ancient world Zoroastrianism was known by the name of "Mazdasnah" or "Mazdayasnah," the doctrine of "universal knowledge." It was revealed by the "Pure Spirit," called also the "Excellent Word," pure, efficacious--"the word that Zoroaster has conveyed to men," which is the "Good Law." The priests were called Madhi, or middlemen, go-betweens, corrupted into Magi, which name is very commonly applied to the priests of the Zoroastrian religion by the Greek authors, beginning with Herodotus, who had travelled in Media and confounded the name of the priests of Magism and the Median religion with that of Zoroastrianism.