If any thing needs be added to the foregoing account in illustration of the natural advantages of the Scythian or Tartar position, itis the circumstance that the shepherds of the Ukraine were divided in their counsels when Darius made war against them, and that only a portion of their tribes coalesced to repel his invasion. Indeed, this internal discord, the ordinary characteristic of races so barbarous, and the frequent motive of their migrations, is the cause why in ancient times they were so little formidable to their southern neighbours; and it suggests a remark to the philosophical historian, Thucydides, which, viewed in the light of subsequent history, is almost prophetic. " As to the Scythians", he says, " not only no European nation, but not even any Asiatic, would be able to measure itself with them, nation with nation, were they but of one mind".
Civilization in ancient times
Such was the safeguard of civilization in ancient times; in modern unhappily it has disappeared. Not unfrequently, since the Christian era, the powers of the North have been under one sovereign, sometimes even for a series of years; and have in consequence been brought into combined action against the South; nay, as time has gone on, they have been thrown into more and more formidable combinations, with more and more disastrous consequences to its prosperity. Of these northern coalitions or Empires, there have been three, nay five, which demand our especial attention both from their size and their historical importance.
The first of these is the Empire of the Huns, under the sovereignty of Attila, in the age of the fall of the Roman Empire; and it began and ended in himself. The second is in the time of the Crusades, when the Moguls spread themselves over Europe and Asia under Zingis Khan, whose power continued to the third generation, nay for two centuries in the northern parts of Europe.
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