ion of a national council. The Coroultai, or
Diet, of the Tartars, was regularly held in the spring and autumn, in
the midst of a plain; where the princes of the reigning family, and the
mursas of the respective tribes, may conveniently assemble on horseback,
with their martial and numerous trains; and the ambitious monarch, who
reviewed the strength, must consult the inclination of an armed
people. The rudiments of a feudal government may be discovered in
the constitution of the Scythian or Tartar nations; but the perpetual
conflict of those hostile nations has sometimes terminated in the
establishment of a powerful and despotic empire. The victor, enriched
by the tribute, and fortified by the arms of dependent kings, has spread
his conquests over Europe or Asia: the successful shepherds of the North
have submitted to the confinement of arts, of laws, and of cities; and
the introduction of luxury, after destroying the freedom of the people,
has undermined the foundations of the throne.

The memory of past events cannot long be preserved in the frequent and
remote emigrations of illiterate Barbarians. The modern Tartars are
ignorant of the conquests of their ancestors; and our knowledge of the
history of the Scythians is derived from their intercourse with the
learned and civilized nations of the South, the Greeks, the Persians,
and the Chinese. The Greeks, who navigated the Euxine, and planted their
colonies along the sea-coast, made the gradual and imperfect discovery
of Scythia; from the Danube, and the confines of Thrace, as far as the
frozen Maeotis, the seat of eternal winter, and Mount Caucasus, which,
in the language of poetry, was described as the utmost boundary of
the earth. They celebrated, with simple credulity, the virtues of the
pastoral life: they entertained a more rational apprehension of the
strength and numbers of the warlike Barbarians, who contemptuously
baffled the immense armament of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. The
Persian monarchs had extended their western conquests to the banks of
the Danube, and the limits of European Scythia. The eastern provinces of
their empire were exposed to the Scythians of Asia; the wild inhabitants
of the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes, two mighty rivers, which
direct their course towards the Caspian Sea. The long and memorable
quarrel of Iran and Touran is still the theme of history or romance: the
famous, perhaps the fabulous, valor of the Persian heroes,