policy to be fair and just in their dealings. We may well believe that
this intelligent people had the wisdom to see their true interests,
and to understand that trade can never prosper unless conducted with
integrity and straightforwardness. The very fact that their trade did
prosper, that their goods were everywhere in request, is sufficient
proof of their commercial honesty, and of their superiority to those
tricks which speedily ruin a commerce.

Calmness is not a common Oriental virtue. It is not even in general
very highly appreciated, being apt to strike the lively, sensitive, and
passionate Eastern as mere dulness and apathy. In China, however, it
is a point of honor that the outward demeanor should be calm and placid
under any amount of provocation; and indignation, fierceness, even
haste, are regarded as signs of incomplete civilization, which the
disciples of Confucius love to note in their would-be rivals of the
West.

We may conceive that some similar notion was entertained by the proud
Babylonians, who no doubt regarded themselves as infinitely superior
in manners and culture, no less than in scientific attainments, to the
"barbarians" of Persia and Greece. While rage boiled in their hearts,
and commands to torture and destroy fell from their tongues, etiquette
may have required that the countenance should be unmoved, the eye
serene, the voice low and gentle. Such contrasts are not uncommonly
seen in the polite Mandarin, whose apparent calmness drives his European
antagonist to despair; and it may well be that the Babylonians of the
sixth and seventh centuries before our era had attained to an equal
power of restraining the expression of feeling. But real gentleness,
meekness, and placability were certainly not the attributes of a people
who were so fierce in their wars and so cruel in their punishments.