Geographical convention has assigned this peninsula to Asia; and, under the influence of name-association, it has come to be regarded as being in every sense an integral portion of that great continent. In point of fact, however, it was at this time a borderland between Orient and Occident, approximating ethnographically rather to West than to East; though, in so far as it was influenced by the outside world, affected rather by the preponderant power and splendour of the East than by the comparative weakness and insignificance of the West. The true historical western frontier of Asia has varied at different periods of history between the Hellespont and the Taurus, according as this debateable land has been in possession of an eastern or a western power. But in the earlier days of the Lydian kingdom the region was politically centred within itself, or, rather, was an aggregation of political circles, and not, as in later times, a mere segment of a great circle, whose centre lay far beyond its borders. Those who know by experience the character of the barrier which, in the shape of Mount Taurus, separates this region from the adjacent East, are most emphatic in insisting upon the formidable nature of that wall of separation. It is not difficult to demonstrate that Taurus has been in the past one of the most decisive physical features in the history of the world. The great systems of civilization have had one of two origins. Either they have sprung up in those great plains of the world whose climate is favourable to ease of existence; or they have been developed by nations whose circumstances have been favourable to wide intercourse with, and experience of, the peoples around them. Egypt, the Euphrates plain, India, and China, are examples of the first; Greece and Great Britain are the most prominent examples of the latter class. As, however, the “civilizations of intercourse” must be largely dependent on navigation, which can itself be alone developed by long experience, it is plain that they must be of later development than the “civilizations of ease of existence.” Thus it is that, many centuries before any system of civilization of high development existed in Europe, the plains of the Euphrates basin had given birth to one which, had nature allowed it unimpeded expansion, must have spread to a great distance from its centre. The all but blank, impassable wall of Taurus prevented the West Asian peninsula from being thoroughly orientalized. Thus that civilization which was springing up beyond the Ægean was allowed to develop on its own lines, hardly affected by those pale rays of the glowing life of the East which the narrow passes of Taurus allowed to penetrate to the lands of the West. It was the Taurus, too, which protected the earlier stages of the growth of the Lydian kingdom.