d foreign to
the mind of man.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their
butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early
periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into
parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and
indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated,
was their mutual destruction. All ancient history is dark and
uncertain. One thing, however, is clear,--there were conquerors, and
conquests in those days; and, consequently, all that devastation by
which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are
maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he led out of Egypt an
army of above 700,000 men; that he overran the Mediterranean coast as
far as Colchis; that in some places he met but little resistance, and of
course shed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others a
people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them dear.
Whoever considers the army this conqueror headed, the space he
traversed, and the opposition he frequently met, with the natural
accidents of sickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which
he must have been subject in the variety of climates and countries his
march lay through, if he knows anything, he must know that even the
conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that of this immense
number but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder
accumulated by the loss of so many of their companions, and the
devastation of so considerable a part of the world. Considering, I say,
the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy weight was almost
alone sufficient to wear down its strength, it will be far from excess
to suppose that one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the
state of the victorious, and from the circumstances it must have been
this at the least; the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as
the greatest slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in
those times and countries ever attend the first rage of conquest. It
will, therefore, be very reasonable to allow on their account as much
as, added to the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million of
deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the oldest we have on the
records of history, (though, as we have observed before, the chronology
of these remote times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene b