Excerpt from Histories of Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great One special object which the author of this series has had in View, in the plan and method which he has followed in the preparation of the successive volumes, has been to adapt them to the purposes of text-books in schools. The study of a general compend of history, such as is frequently used as a text-book, is highly use ful, if it comes in at the right stage of educa tion, when the mind is sufficiently matured, and has acquired sufficient preliminary knowledge to understand and appreciate so condensed a generalization as a summary of the whole his tory of a nation contained in an ordinary. Volume must necessarily be. Without this degree of maturity of mind, and this preparation, the study of such a work will be, as it too frequent ly is, a mere mechanical committing to mem ory of names, and dates, and phrases, which awaken no interest, communicate no ideas, and impart no useful knowledge to the mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.