Spread out earth's holiest record here,
Of days and deeds to reverence dear;
A zeal like this, what pious legends tell?
On kingdoms built
In blood and guilt,
The worshipers of vulgar triumph dwell:
But what exploit with them shall page
Who rose to bless their kind--
Who left their nation and their age
Man's spirit to unbind
Who boundless seas passed o'er,
And boldly met in every path,
Famine, and frost, and heathen wrath,
To dedicate a shore
Where Piety's meek train might breathe their vow,
And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow;
Where Liberty's glad race might come,
And set up there an everlasting home!
_Charles Sprague_.
CHAPTER IX.
_PLASSEY; AND HOW AN EMPIRE WAS WON._
1. India, the great peninsula stretching from the Himalayas to Cape
Comorin, is nearly half as large as Europe, and contains a population
of 150,000,000. Myth and tradition claim for this people a very great
antiquity, and there are many evidences that in arts, government, and
literature, India is at least coeval with China and Egypt, the three
constituting the most ancient civilizations of the world. While
Western Europe was still the abode of barbarians, and while even
Greece had scarcely felt the impulse which aroused her to intellectual
life, the fabrics of India had reached a marvelous degree of fineness
and beauty; and the monarchs of the West counted it a great privilege
to be clothed in the "purple and fine linen" of the Orient.
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