awe,
Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw.
Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through
the gloom
Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from
the tomb.
There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are
shed,
To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy
dead!


THE BATTLE OF PLATAE'A.

When Xerxes returned to his own dominions he left his general,
Mardo'nius, with three hundred thousand men, to complete, if
possible, the conquest of Greece. Mardonius passed the winter
in Thessaly, but in the following summer his army was totally
defeated, and himself slain, in the battle of Plataea. Two hundred
thousand Persians fell here, and only a small remnant escaped
across the Hellespont. We extract from BULWER'S Athens the
following eloquent description of this battle, both for the sake
of its beauty and to show the effect of the religion of the Greeks
upon the military character of the people. Mardonius had advanced
to the neighbor-hood of Plataea, when he encountered that part
of the Grecian army composed mostly of Spartans and Lacedaemonians,
commanded by Pausa'nias, and numbering about fifty thousand men.
The Athenians had previously fallen back to a more secure position,
where the entire army had been ordered to concentrate; and
Pausanias had but just commenced the retrograde movement when