In Asia.

Cimmerians, Scythians, Parthians, Mongols, Turks; in Europe, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Avars, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Bulgarians, have successively illustrated the law, and made us familiar with its operation.

But there was a time in history before the law had come into force; and its very existence must have been then unsuspected.

Even since it began to operate, it has so often undergone prolonged suspension, that the wisest may be excused if, under such circumstances, they cease to bear it in mind, and are as much startled when a fresh illustration of it occurs, as if the like had never happened before.

Probably there is seldom an occasion of its coming into play which does not take men more or less by surprise, and rivet their attention by its seeming strangeness and real unexpectedness.
If Western Asia had ever, in the remote ages before the Assyrian monarchy was established, been subject to invasions of this character--which is not improbable--at any rate so long a period had elapsed since the latest of them, that in the reigns of Asshur-pani-pal and Cyaxares they were wholly forgotten and the South reposed in happy unconsciousness of a danger which might at any time have burst upon it, had the Providence which governs the world so willed.