opinion, regal and ecclesiastical power belonged exclusively to the descendants of the founder of the Moslem faith and dominion. Some of them held peculiar and somewhat loose opinions concerning the future state. Their heaven or paradise was only the pleasures to be enjoyed in this present life; their hell consisted exclusively of its pains, and hence not unfrequently their conduct was grossly immoral. That was right according to them which contributed most to present enjoy

ment.

If the object of these pages were to give a perfect history of Mahometanism, other more modern sects must be added, and a detail of persecution given, which would furnish illustrations in addition to the many we are already familiar with, of the folly of anticipating a uniformity of religious belief, or practice, and condemning, by its results, in no measured terms, the absurdity of inflicting pains and penalties for differences of opinion. Persecution is invariably the result either of ignorance or tyranny.

Some have represented Mahomet as greatly superior to the age in which he lived; and as far surpassing his countrymen in the liberality of his views. In some respects this representation is true, and despite of persecution and ignominy he nobly persevered, as we have seen, in a cause which he deemed sacred; but that he was tolerant, or that, as has been said, "he was distinguished by clemency in the full career of conquest," cannot be admitted. A few passages in the Koran may indeed make bigotry blush. an humble preacher and While Mahomet was reformer, he granted liberty of conscience; but

what ruler, what pretended prophet ever breathed fiercer language of persecution than he. No wars in any age of the world have been so desolating as those which have been conducted under the authority of the Koran; they were all religious wars and as was to be expected, when but little foreign conquest remained to be achieved, the fierce spirits of his followers fell upon each other; nor has the Christian world been subjected, among all its horrors, to one half of the bloodshed and war; or marked by a tithe of the implacable animosity which controversies among Mahometans have occasioned. We are not ignorant of the mischiefs, -the miseries which a political Christianity has produced in almost every civilized nation, but on comparing them with the miseries inflicted, directly or indirectly, by Islamism, we are compelled utterly to repudiate the infidel allegation, that the religion of Jesus Christ has occasioned more cruelty and war in our world than any other cause whatsoever. The history of every age of the Hegira, teems with details of horror. In its prosperity, Mahometanism was the scourge of the nations; and its decline, the representative of its various sects emulated each other in mutual detestation and hatred; they agreed only in a principle of discord; and but that in mercy the Sovereign ruler of the universe restrained its fury, and limited its power, ere now it had rendered the world one vast Aceldama, or field of blood.

U

CHAPTER XV.

Literature and science of the Arabs.-Their facilities for literary and scientific pursuits.-Patronage of literature by the princes of the house of Abbas.-Almamoun-Arabian schools. Eloquence. Poetry.-The Arabian tales.-History.-Geography. Speculative sciences. Astrology. Mathematical knowledge of the Arabs.-Astronomy.—Architecture.—The fine arts.-Agriculture.--Medicine.-Chemistry.-Our obligations to Arab literature.

HITHERTO the followers of the Arabian prophet have been considered only as enthusiastic military adventurers, subduing in their wide and rapid progress most of the nations of the then known world. The lust of power, and successful military enterprise, are commonly unfavourable to the cultivation of liberal arts, so that a conquering people usually exhibit a literary character not much above that of the savage. The Goths and the Huns, for instance, are everywhere known as among the most implacable foes of knowledge. Nor did the early Arabs regard it with more favour. Mahomet found his countrymen sunk in the deepest barbarism; he was incapable of any direct effort to raise them, and as has already appeared from the ruthless destruction of the Alexandrian library by Omar, one of his earliest successors, they were not in a much better condition after the close than at the commencement of his eventful career.

Their settlement in the countries they had subdued, the unlimited resources which their wide and general conquests placed within their reach, and probably the leisure which their almost universal dominion afforded, led speedily to a change in their character in relation to literary pursuits, of

which we of the more enlightened west are still reaping the advantage. It was about the middle of the seventh century that Omar committed the famous collection at Alexandria to the flames: before the end of the eighth, literature began to enjoy the munificent patronage of the caliphs of the Abassidan race, who induced upon the stern fanaticism of the followers of the prophet the softening influence of learning; and by an anomaly in the history of mankind, the most valuable lessons in science and arts were received from the very people who pursued, with relentless hostility, the religion and liberties of every other nation.

The Greeks were the early patrons of literature and science. Among them philosophy found its earliest home, and arts and systems are commonly supposed to have sprung up chiefly under their fostering care: but, as recent researches have shown, very much of their knowledge was derived from still more ancient sources. Their philosophers did but little beyond copying and improving upon the mysteries of Egyptian hierophants, and Persian magi. Their system of the universe, which made the nearest approach to the more correct discoveries of modern times, was previously known to the learned Hindus; and it may admit of question whether their whole mythology, allowing only for the additions which a chastened and philosophic, as well as vivid imagination would make to it, has not its prototype in some Asiatic religio-philosophical system. A learned author on the Philosophy of the Asiatics, says, that the whole of the theology and part of the philosophy of modern scientific research, may be found in the

Hindu Vedas. He adds, "That most subtile spirit which our own Newton suspected to pervade natural bodies, and to lie concealed in them so as to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection, and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endued with those very powers, and the Vedas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly attribute to the sun." The extension, therefore, of the Arabian victories over the eastern world, as well as their entire command, after the overthrow of the Greek empire, of the resources possessed by that people, gave them access to all the literary stores then in existence.

It has been said, and probably not without good reason, that Mahomet himself saw and felt the importance of literary distinction. Among the sayings attributed to him, the following have been taken as an evidence of his sense of the value of learning, "A mind without erudition, is like a body without a soul. Glory consists not in wealth, but in knowledge;" and, as the Koran affords abundant proof, he was by no means unmindful of that mental cultivation, the means of which were within his reach. His followers, absorbed with the ideas of conquest and conversion, despised equally the religion and the learning of the nations they subdued; but when the age of rapine and violence yielded to comparative security and peace, and the fair and splendid city of the oriental caliphs arose, the muses were courted from their ancient temples, and by the milder and more graceful achievements of science and literature,