80,000 men. They drank up rivers, and
cut their way through giant-mountains. They were first stopped at
Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. They fought for
a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be
tried. The contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty,
whether there is a principle in man, by which a handful of individuals,
pervaded with lofty sentiments, and a conviction of what is of most
worth in our nature, can defy the brute force, and put to flight the
attack, of bones, joints and sinews, though congregated in multitudes,
numberless as the waves of the sea, or the sands on its shore. The flood
finally rolled back: and in process of time Alexander, with these Greeks
whom the ignorance of the East affected to despise, founded another
universal monarchy on the ruins of Persia. This is certainly no vulgar
history.

Christianity is another of those memorable chapters in the annals of
mankind, to which there is probably no second. The son of a carpenter in
a little, rocky country, among a nation despised and enslaved, undertook
to reform the manners of the people of whom he was a citizen. The
reformation he preached was unpalatable to the leaders of the state; he
was persecuted; and finally suffered the death reserved for the lowest
malefactors, being nailed to a cross. He was cut off in the very
beginning of his career, before he had time to form a sect. His
immediate representatives and successors were tax-gatherers and
fishermen. What could be more incredible, till proved by the event, than
that a religion thus begun, should have embraced in a manner the whole
civilised world, and that of its kingdom there should be no visible end?
This is a novelty in the history of the world, equally if we consider
it as brought about by the immediate interposition of the author of all
things, or regard it, as some pretend to do, as happening in the course
of mere human events.

Rome, "the eternal city," is likewise a subject that stands out from
the vulgar history of the human race. Three times, in three successive
forms, has she been the mistress of the world. First, by the purity, the
simplicity, the single-heartedness, the fervour and perseverance of her
original character she qualified herself to subdue all the nations
of mankind. Next, having conquered the earth by her virtue and by the
spirit of liberty, she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries