From these intrigues Xerxes aroused himself in the second year of his reign, and, as the necessary commencement of more extended designs, conducted in person an expedition against the rebellious Egyptians.

That people had neither military skill nor constitutional hardihood, but they were inspired with the most devoted affection for their faith and their institutions.

This affection was to them what the love of liberty is in others--it might be easy to conquer them, it was almost impossible to subdue.

By a kind of fatality their history, for centuries, was interwoven with that of Greece: their perils and their enemies the same.

The ancient connexion which apocryphal tradition recorded between races so opposite, seemed a typical prophecy of that which actually existed in the historical times.