elled against the central power, and Egypt in
particular was almost always in a state of insurrection against its
nominal sovereign. There was no longer any effective central control, or
any internal principle of unity fused through the huge mass of the
empire, and binding it together.

Persia was evidently about to fall; but, had it not been for Alexander's
invasion of Asia, she would most probably have fallen beneath some other
oriental power, as Media and Babylon had formerly fallen before herself,
and as, in after-times, the Parthian supremacy gave way to the revived
ascendency of Persia in the East, under the sceptres of the Arsacidae. A
revolution that merely substituted one Eastern power for another would
have been utterly barren and unprofitable to mankind.

Alexander's victory at Arbela not only overthrew an oriental dynasty,
but established European rulers in its stead. It broke the monotony of
the eastern world by the impression of western energy and superior
civilization, even as England's present mission is to break up the
mental and moral stagnation of India and Cathay by pouring upon and
through them the impulsive current of Anglo-Saxon commerce and conquest.

Arbela, the city which has furnished its name to the decisive battle
which gave Asia to Alexander, lies more than twenty miles from the
actual scene of conflict. The little village, then named Gaugamela, is
close to the spot where the armies met, but has ceded the honor of
naming the battle to its more euphonious neighbor. Gaugamela is situated
in one of the wide plains that lie between the Tigris and the mountains
of Kurdistan. A few undulating hillocks diversify the surface of this
sandy tract; but the ground is generally level and admirably qualified
for the evolutions of cavalry, and also calculated to give the larger of
two armies the full advantage of numerical superiority.

The Persian King--who, before he came to the throne, had proved his
personal valor as a soldier and his skill as a general--had wisely
selected this region for the third and decisive encounter between his
forces and the invader. The previous defeats of his troops, however
severe they had been, were not looked on as irreparable. The Granicus
had been fought by his generals rashly and without mutual concert; and,
though Darius himself had commanded and been beaten at Issus, that
defeat might be attributed to the disadvantageous nature of the ground,
where, cooped up betwe