ing round, assailed on each flank the hitherto victorious Persian centre. Aristides and Themistocles charged it again in front with their re-organized troops. The Persians strove hard to keep their ground. Evening came on, and the rays of the setting-sun darted full into the eyes of the Asiatic combatants, while the Greeks fought with increasing advantage with the light at their backs. At last the hitherto unvanquished lords of Asia broke and fled, and the Greeks followed, striking them down, to the water's edge, where the invaders were now hastily launching their galleys, and seeking to re-embark and fly. Flushed with success, the Athenians attacked and strove to fire the fleet. But here the Asiatics resisted desperately, and the principal loss sustained by the Greeks was in the assault on the ships. Here fell the brave War-Ruler Callimachus, the general Stesilaus, and other Athenians of note. Seven galleys were fired; but the Persians succeeded in saving the rest. They pushed off from the fatal shore; but even here the skill of Datis did not desert him, and he sailed round to the western coast of Attica, in hopes to find the city unprotected, and to gain possession of it from some of Hippias' partizans. Miltiades, however, saw and counteracted his manœuvre. Leaving Aristides, and the troops of his tribe, to guard the spoil and the slain, the Athenian commander led his conquering army by a rapid night-march back across the country to Athens. And when the Persian fleet had doubled the Cape of Sunium and sailed up to the Athenian harbour in the morning, Datis saw arrayed on the heights above the city the troops before whom his men had fled on the preceding evening. All hope of further conquest in Europe for the time was abandoned, and the baffled armada returned to the Asiatic coasts.

It was not by one defeat, however signal, that the pride of Persia could be broken, and her dreams of universal empire dispelled. Ten years afterwards she renewed her attempts upon Europe on a grander scale of enterprise, and was repulsed by Greece with greater and reiterated loss. Larger forces and heavier slaughter, than had been seen at Marathon, signalised the conflicts of Greeks and Persians at Artemisium, Salamis, Platæa, and the Eurymedon, and the after triumphs of the Macedonian King at the Granicus, at Issus, and Arbela. But mighty and momentous as these battles were, they rank not with Marathon in importance. They originated no new impulse. They turned back no current of fate. They were merely confirmatory of the already existing bias which Marathon had created. The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the two nations. It broke for ever the spell of Persian invincibility, which had previously paralyzed men's minds. It generated among the Greeks the spirit which beat back Xerxes, and afterwards led on Xenophon, Agesilaus, and Alexander, in terrible retaliation through their Asiatic campaigns. It secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the western world, and the gradual ascendancy for many ages of the great principles of European civilization.

VISIT TO HIS HIGHNESS RAJAH BROOKE,

AT SARAWAK.

BY PETER MCQUHA E,

CAPTAIN OF HER MAJESTY'S SHIP DEDALUS.

WITH AN ENGRAVING OF THE BUNGALOW OF THE RAJAH.

On the 18th July, 1845, H.M. squadron, consisting of one line-ofbattle ship, two frigates, three brigs, and one steamer, under the command of Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, got under weigh, formed order of sailing in two columns, and proceeded to beat down the Straits of Malacca. After several days' sailing, a fierce Sumatra squall was encountered, which brought the squadron in two compact lines to an anchor off the Buffalo rocks in very deep water. Some cause prevented the commander-in-chief from approaching nearer to the town of Singapore. Supplies of bread and water having been brought out by an iron steamer, the Pluto,-Mr. Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, and Capt. Bethune, the commissioners for the affairs of Borneo, having embarked in the flag-ship, a brig of war detached to New Zealand -once more the order of sailing was formed, and the force proceeded down the straits of Singapore en route for Borneo.

That immense, unexplored, and little-known island has, since the occupation of Singapore by the British, as a natural consequence become of daily increasing importance, and the settlement on that fine and navigable river, the Sarawak, under the rajahship of Mr. Brooke, bids fair to produce results, which, even in his most sanguine moments, he could scarcely have anticipated.

It is hardly possible to speak of this gentleman in terms of sufficient force to convey an idea of what has already been accomplished by his talents, courage, perseverance, judgment, and integrity. It required moral courage of a high order, in the face of difficulties to the minds of most men insurmountable, to bring the wild, piratical, and treacherous Malay, and the still more savage race, the Dyak tribes, not only to listen to the voice of reason, but to become amenable to its laws under his government. His perseverance was great under trials, disappointments, and provocations of a nature to damp the energy of the most enthusiastic philanthropist that ever undertook to ameliorate the condition of his fellow man. His judgment has been rarely excelled in discovering the secret motives of the different chiefs with whom his innumerable negotiations had to be conducted; and in an extraordinary degree he possessed the power of discriminating between the wish to be honest and that to deceive, betray, and plunder. He evinced the most unimpeachable integrity, the most rigid justice in protecting the poor man from the tyranny and exactions of the more powerful chief; and he showed his little kingdom that the administration of law was as inflexible in its operation towards the great men of the country as towards the more humble of his subjects;-and all this he carried into effect by mildness of manner and gentleness of rule.

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F

He has gained the love and affection of many; he has incurred the hatred of some, and is hourly exposed to the sanguinary vengeance of the leaders, whose riches were gathered amidst murder and plunder from the unfortunate crew of some betrayed or shipwrecked vessel, and who have foresight sufficient to perceive that if settlements similar to that on the Sarawak should be extended along the northwest coast of the island, their bloody occupation is gone. They therefore endeavour to hinder, as far as in them lies, the good which is flowing from the noble and brilliant example of his highness the rajah of Sarawak, of whom Great Britain has reason to be proud. It is for the British government to afford that countenance and protection which shall be necessary to prevent the interference of others, who from jealousy may wish by intrigues to interrupt, if not to destroy the great moral lesson now first exhibited amongst these wild people, and in regions hitherto shrouded in the darkest clouds of heathenism and barbarity, amongst a people by whom piracy, murder, and plunder are not considered as crimes, but as the common acts of a profession which their forefathers followed, which they have been taught to look upon from their earliest days as the only true occupation, in which they may rise according to the number and atrocity of their cruelties.

Not long since several wretches were convicted at Singapore, on the clearest evidence, and condemned to death for deeds of the most revolting and sanguinary barbarity. At the foot of the gallows rather a fine-looking young man, a Malay, justified himself on the principles above stated, and died declaring himself an innocent and very ill-used man, since all he had done was in the regular way of his business. It is not to be wondered at then, that, entertaining such doctrines and sentiments, the whole Malay population of the great and numerous islands of the East, have been regarded by the European commercial world and navigators in these seas as a race of treacherous and blood-thirsty miscreants. How admirable, then, in our countryman to have commenced the good work of regeneration amongst many millions of such men, not by the power of the sword, but by demonstrating practically the eternal and immutable rules of equity and truth!

On the arrival of the squadron off the Sarawak, a party accompanied the admiral in the Pluto to the house and establishment of Mr. Brooke at Kutching, about eighteen miles above the mouth of the river. The house, although not large, is airy and commodious for the climate, and stands on the left bank of the river on undulating ground of the richest quality, capable of producing in abundance every article common to the tropics; clearance was progressing on both sides of the river, and will doubtless rapidly increase when the perfect security of property which exists is more generally understood and appreciated. Some years ago a small colony of industrious Chinese located themselves on the banks of the river, under the protection of the rajah of the day: their little settlement became flourishing and prosperous, and was rapidly increasing in wealth and importance, when at one fell swoop the villanous Malays seized, plundered, and murdered them; and the more fortunate Chinese who escaped home spread the report of their treatment so widely,