k his family prisoners. From
this time Alexander held complete mastery of the western dominions of
Darius, whom the conqueror afterward dethroned.

After he had next invaded and subjugated Egypt and there founded the
city of Alexandria, he pursued King Darius, who had taken flight, into
the very heart of his empire, where the Persian monarch, on the plains
of Gaugamela, near the village of Arbela, made his last stand against
his invincible foe. Of the battle to which Arbela gave its name, and
which proved the death-blow of the Persian empire, Creasy's narrative
furnishes a realistic description.)

A long and not uninstructive list might be made out of illustrious men
whose characters have been vindicated during recent times from
aspersions which for centuries had been thrown on them. The spirit of
modern inquiry, and the tendency of modern scholarship, both of which
are often said to be solely negative and destructive, have, in truth,
restored to splendor, and almost created anew, far more than they have
assailed with censure or dismissed from consideration as unreal.

The truth of many a brilliant narrative of brilliant exploits has of
late years been triumphantly demonstrated, and the shallowness of the
sceptical scoffs with which little minds have carped at the great minds
of antiquity has been in many instances decisively exposed. The laws,
the politics, and the lines of action adopted or recommended by eminent
men and powerful nations have been examined with keener investigation
and considered with more comprehensive judgment than formerly were
brought to bear on these subjects. The result has been at least as often
favorable as unfavorable to the persons and the states so scrutinized,
and many an oft-repeated slander against both measures and men has thus
been silenced, we may hope forever.

The veracity of Herodotus, the pure patriotism of Pericles, of
Demosthenes, and of the Gracchi, the wisdom of Clisthenes and of
Licinius as constitutional reformers, may be mentioned as facts which
recent writers have cleared from unjust suspicion and censure. And it
might be easily shown that the defensive tendency which distinguishes
the present and recent great writers of Germany, France, and England has
been equally manifested in the spirit in which they have treated the
heroes of thought and heroes of action who lived during what we term the
Middle Ages, and whom it was so long the fashion to sneer at or neglect.