From their fire-worship, we must not be led to accuse the ancient Persians of an absolute deification of the elements, and of a sensual idolatry of nature; in their religion, which was so eminently spiritual, the earthly fire and the earthly sacrifice were but the signs and the emblems of another devotion and of a higher Power. Symbols and figurative representations were in general not so rigidly excluded from their religious system, as from that of the Hebrews. Yet, among the Persians, these had a totally different character from those in the Indian or Egyptian idolatry. The generous character of the ancient Persians, their life and their manners, which display such an exalted sense of nature, possess in themselves something peculiarly winning and captivating for the feelings. The leading result of the few observations we have made may be comprised in the following general remarks:-- If a poetical recollection of Paradise sufficed for the moral destiny of man--if the pure feeling, enthusiasm, and admiration for sideral nature were alone capable of revealing all the glory of the celestial abodes, and of the heavenly hosts, of opening to mental eyes the gates of eternal light--if this were the one thing necessary, and of the first necessity for man--if it were, or could be conformable to the will of God, that the eternal empire of pure light should be diffused over the whole earth by the enthusiasm of martial glory, by the generous valour and heroic magnanimity of a chivalric nobility, such as the Persian undoubtedly was--then indeed would the Persians hold the pre-eminence, or be entitled to claim the first rank among those four nations that were nearest the source of the primitive revelation. But it is otherwise ordained; the path alone fit and salutary for man, and evidently marked out by the will of God, is the path of patience and perseverance--the unremitting struggle of slow preparation. Thus, as we may easily conceive, it was not the Persians, distinguished as that nation was by its noble character, and by its spiritual views of life; it was not the Egyptians, versed and initiated as they were in all the mysteries of nature and all the depths of science;--but it was the politically insignificant, and, in an earthly point of view, the far less important, almost imperceptible, people of the Hebrews, that were chosen to be the medium of transition--the connecting link between the primitive revelation and the full development of religion in modern times, and its last glorious expansion towards the close of ages. They are now the carriers, and, we may well say, the porters of the designs of Providence, destined to bear the torch of primitive tradition and sacred promise from the beginning to the consummation of the world:--while the once magnanimous nation of the Persians has sunk from that pure knowledge of truth, and those high spiritual notions of religion it once entertained, down to the anti-christian superstition of Mahomet; and the