Thus from the sublime terrace of the Acropolis, have we cast another glance over that glorious land where Homer breathed forth those songs for six and twenty centuries unexcelled; where Phidias, like his own Jupiter, sat serene on the loftiest throne of art; where Pericles ruled with sovereign grandeur in the first of cities, not by mercenary arms, but by the magic influence of mind; where Socrates first scanned the human heart, and learned to analyze its deep and mighty workings; and whence the royal pupil of Aristotle, the last and greatest of universal victors, went forth on the mission of conquest, not designedly to plunder and destroy, but to spread the literature, arts, science, philosophy, and religion of immortal Greece throughout the civilized world. CHAPTER V. RELIGION. The East is the native land of religion, whence a perpetual exodus has continually advanced toward the West. As the sun in the beginning, so truth and life first shone from the orient; and the march of civilization has ever since been in the direction of that great orb. The Assyrians were not monotheistic, but they were far from being so polytheistic as the Egyptians, who were imbued with an African fetichism such as never debased the Asiatic race. Hence, their symbolism was much simpler and less repulsive than that of the Egyptians. The ancient Persians were less superstitious than the Assyrians, and presented their paraphrase of Te Deum first among intellectual nations without temples. They have left nothing that pertains to sacred art, not even tombs. With them God was omnipresent, fire his symbol, the firmament his throne, the sun and stars his representatives, the elements his ministers, and the most acceptable worship a holy life. But a belief in the existence and exercise of supernatural powers is older than the magism or magic, whose origin belongs to that indefinite antiquity which witnessed the feuds of Ninus and Zoroaster, when the gods instructed the Indian devotee how to subordinate them to his purposes, or when Odin discovered the Runes, which could chain the elements and awake the dead. Earlier than Assyrian Chaldeans, Israelitish Levites, or Median and Persian Magi, religious sentiments were native to man, and magician and priest were synonymous terms. Then was the arbiter of weal and woe, of blessings and curses, invested with the awful privilege of invoking the gods and performing religious services. Aided by popular credulity, the inspired seer could move mountains, stir up Leviathan, govern disease, or, like Balaam, destroy foes by imprecations.