dynasty; and hence we are entitled approximately to fix the series to the seventh and eighth centuries before our era. The Urarda must at this time have exercised a dominion over almost the whole of the region to which the name of Armenia commonly attaches. They were worthy antagonists of the Assyrians, and, though occasionally worsted in fight, maintained their independence, at any rate, till the time of Asshur-bani-pal (about B.C. 640), when the last king of the Van series, whose name is read as Bilat-duri, succumbed to the Assyrian power, and consented to pay a tribute for his dominions. There is reason to believe that between the time when we obtain this view of the primitive Armenian peoples and that at which we next have any exact knowledge of the condition of the country--the time of the Persian monarchy--a great revolution had taken place in the region. The Nairi, Urarda, and Minni were Turanian, or, at any rate, non-Arian, races. Their congeners in Western Asia were the early Babylonians and the Susianians, not the Medes, the Persians, or the Phrygians. But by the time of Herodotus the Arian character of the Armenians had become established. Their close connection with the Phrygians was recognized. They had changed their national appellation; for while in the Assyrian period the terms Nairi and Urarda had preponderated, under the Persians they had come to be called Armenians and their country Armenia. The personal names of individuals in the country, both men and women, had acquired a decidedly Arian cast. Everything seems to indicate that a strange people had immigrated into the land, bringing with them a new language, new manners and customs, and a new religious system. From what quarter they had come, whether from Phrygia as Herodotus and Stephen believed, or, as we should gather from their language and religion, from Media, is perhaps doubtful; but it seems certain that from one quarter or another Armenia had been Arianized; the old Turanian character had passed away from it; immigrants had nocked in, and a new people had been formed--the real Armenian of later times, and indeed of the present day--by the admixture of ruling Arian tribes with a primitive Turanian population, the descendants of the old inhabitants.