syrian and
Persian monarchs. The boy's poetical mind, strengthened and developed by
the study of the art of reasoning, and of the profound mathematical
knowledge of the Chaldean astronomers, easily grasped the highest
subjects, and showed from the first a capacity and lucidity that
delighted his master. To attain by a life of rigid ascetic practice to
the intuitive comprehension of knowledge, to the understanding of
natural laws not discernible to the senses alone, and to the merging of
the soul and higher intelligence in the one universal and divine
essence, were the objects Daniel proposed to his willing pupil. The
noble boy, by his very nature, scorned and despised the pleasures of
sense, and yearned ever for the realising of an ideal wherein a sublime
wisdom of transcendent things should direct a sublime courage in things
earthly to the doing of great deeds.

Year after year the young Persian grew up in the splendid surroundings
of the court, distinguished before all those of his age for his courage
and fearless honesty, for his marvellous beauty, and for his profound
understanding of all subjects, great and small, that came within the
sphere of his activity; most of all remarkable, perhaps, for the fact
that he cared nothing for the society of women, and had never been known
to love any woman. He was a favourite with Cyrus; and even Cambyses,
steeped in degrading vice, and surrounded by flatterers, panderers, and
priests of the Magians, from the time when he began to suspect his
brother, the real Smerdis, of designs upon the throne, recognised the
exceptional merits and gifts of the young noble, and promoted him to his
position in Echatana, at the time when he permitted Daniel to build his
great tower in that ancient fortress. The dissipated king may have
understood that the presence of such men as Daniel and Zoroaster would
be of greater advantage in an outlying district where justice and
moderation would have a good effect upon the population, than in his
immediate neighbourhood, where the purity and temperance of their lives
contrasted too strongly with the degrading spectacle his own vices
afforded to the court.

Here, in the splendid retirement of a royal palace, the prophet had
given himself up completely to the contemplation of those subjects
which, through all his life, had engrossed his leisure time, and of
which the knowledge had so directly contributed to his singular career;
and in the many hours of l