aker against Alexander bear all this in mind, and then
let him reflect on his own insignificance, the pettiness of his own
circumstances and affairs, and the blunders that he makes about these,
paltry and trifling as they are. Let him then ask himself whether he is
a fit person to censure and revile such a man as Alexander. I believe
that there was in his time no nation of men, no city, nay, no single
individual with whom Alexander's name had not become a familiar word. I
therefore hold that such a man, who was like no ordinary mortal, was not
born into the world without some special providence."

And one of the most distinguished soldiers and writers, Sir Walter
Raleigh, though he failed to estimate justly the full merits of
Alexander, has expressed his sense of the grandeur of the part played in
the world by "the great Emathian conqueror" in language that well
deserves quotation:

"So much hath the spirit of some one man excelled as it hath undertaken
and effected the alteration of the greatest states and commonweals, the
erection of monarchies, the conquest of kingdoms and empires, guided
handfuls of men against multitudes of equal bodily strength, contrived
victories beyond all hope and discourse of reason, converted the fearful
passions of his own followers into magnanimity, and the valor of his
enemies into cowardice; such spirits have been stirred up in sundry ages
of the world, and in divers parts thereof, to erect and cast down again,
to establish and to destroy, and to bring all things, persons, and
states to the same certain ends which the infinite spirit of the
_Universal_, piercing, moving, and governing all things, hath ordained.
Certainly, the things that this King did were marvellous and would
hardly have been undertaken by anyone else; and though his father had
determined to have invaded the Lesser Asia, it is like enough that he
would have contented himself with some part thereof, and not have
discovered the river of Indus, as this man did."

A higher authority than either Arrian or Raleigh may now be referred to
by those who wish to know the real merit of Alexander as a general, and
how far the commonplace assertions are true that his successes were the
mere results of fortunate rashness and unreasoning pugnacity. Napoleon
selected Alexander as one of the seven greatest generals whose noble
deeds history has handed down to us, and from the study of whose
campaigns the principles of war are to be lea