conquest appeared among the Semitic nations, dashing them violently against each other; and that at length one Semitic fragment――that is, the Assyrians――attained the supremacy over the rest, and founded a great dominion, called the Assyrian empire, which stretched from Egypt to the borders of India (B. C. 800); and 4_th_, That the pressure of this Semitic power against the Indo-Persic mass was followed by a reäction――one great section of the Indo-Persians rising into strength, supplanting the Assyrian empire, and founding one of their own, called the Persian empire (B. C. 536), which was destined in its turn to be supplanted by the confederacy of Grecian states in B. C. 326. Beginning with Egypt, let us trace separately the career of each of the Eastern nations till that point of time at which we find them all embodied in the great Persian empire:―― THE EGYPTIANS. Egypt, whose position on the map of Africa is well known, is about 500 miles long from its most northern to its most southern point. Through its whole length flows the Nile, a fine large stream rising in the inland kingdom of Abyssinia, and, from certain periodic floods to which it is subject, of great use in irrigating and fertilizing the country. A large portion of Egypt consists of an alluvial plain, similar to our meadow grounds, formed by the deposits of the river, and bounded by ranges of mountains on either side. The greatest breadth of the valley is 150 miles, but generally it is much less, the mountain ranges on either side often being not more than a few miles from the river. A country so favorably situated, and possessing so many advantages, could not but be among the earliest peopled; and accordingly, as far back as the human memory can reach, we find a dense population of a very peculiar character inhabiting the whole valley of the Nile. These ancient Egyptians seem, as we have already said, to have been a mixture of the Semitic with the Ethiopic element, speaking a peculiar language, still surviving in a modified form in the Coptic of modern Egypt. In the ancient authors, however, the Egyptians are always distinguished from the Ethiopians, with whom they kept up so close an intercourse, that it has been made a question whether the Egyptian institutions came from the Ethiopian Meroe, or whether, as is more probable, civilization was transmitted to Ethiopia from Egypt.