favourable to Mahomet and his work than the points on which we have now been dwelling. But let us not shrink from allowing it its full due. On the one hand the Marabout, as a Mahometan priest is called in Africa, teaches to the degraded children of Ham reading and writing, along with the belief in Eternity, and in a living, almighty, all-wise and good God, and produces a marked and sensible improvement, insomuch that the traveller would always choose, if possible, for a place of rest a village where a Marabout is living: on the other hand, the courts of Bagdad and of Cordova undoubtedly patronised the labours of the intellect, and the throne was surrounded by multifarious, if not very original, science and learning. You only sent for a barber,' says the persecuting chatterbox in the tale, but here in my person 'you have the best barber in Bagdad; an ex'perienced physician; a very profound chemist; an infallible astrologer; a finished grammarian; 'a complete orator; a subtle logician; a mathematician perfectly well versed in geometry, arith'metic, astronomy, and all the divisions of algebra; 'an historian fully master of the histories of the 'kingdoms of the universe: besides, I know all 'parts of philosophy; I have all the traditions 'upon my fingers' ends. I am a poet, I am an 'architect; nay, what is it I am not? there is 'nothing in nature hidden from me.' In some of these branches of knowledge, Europe is certainly under obligation to the Saracens, as the Arabs got named in the West. The nine numerals were brought into Europe by them, and effected a per1 Möhler, p. 386.

* Thousand and One Nights.'-Story told by the Tailor.

fect revolution in arithmetic. Algebra was at least made known to us through them, so far as to preserve its Arab name; and Alchemy, which, however futile in itself, proved a most useful handmaid to real chemistry, betrays a similar derivation.1 We have alluded to the star Aldebaran, as retaining its Arabian appellation; it may be added, that a very large proportion of stars in the great constellations have done the same, thus bearing testimony to the Saracenic cultivation of Astronomy. Such are Antares in Scorpio, Algenib in Perseus; Rastaber in Draco, and numbers more. We hear on all sides of their commentaries upon Aristotle: even Dante does not refuse to

name

‘Averroes, che il gran commento feo ; *

and Sismondi thinks that their poets exercised considerable influence upon the taste and genius of the Troubadours.3 Mahometan literature is, however, too large a subject to receive anything like justice at our hands, though we must add a word or two hereafter respecting one of its leading features. One more of the qualifications claimed by the barber, we must just allude to, we mean the architectural skill of the Saracens. The Turks have not, we believe, produced anything in this respect worthy of admiration; on the contrary, their buildings are said to be heavy, badly proportioned, and destitute of genius. But it was far otherwise with the first promulgators of Islamism. They had a style which was really their own, and 'Chambers's Cyclopedia, articles Algebra and Alchemy. "Inferno, iv. 144.

* De la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe, tom. i. chap. iii.

16

sprang out of their creed. The architecture of 'the Arabs,' says Mr. Owen Jones, is essentially 'religious, and the offspring of the Koran, as 'Gothic architecture is of the Bible. The pro'hibition to represent animal life, caused them to 'seek for other means of decoration; inscriptions 'from the Koran, interwoven with geometrical ' ornaments and flowers, not drawn decidedly from 'nature, but translated through the loom; for it 'would seem that the Arabs, in changing their 'wandering for a settled life, in striking the tent to plant it in a form more solid, had transferred 'the luxurious shawls and hangings of Cashmere, 'which had adorned their former dwellings, to 'their new, changing the tent pole for a marble 'column, and the silken tissue for gilded plaster.' Mr. Ford observes, that it might have been added, that the palm-tree was the type of the columns which they used in their court-yards (patios). How brilliant was their success, we know, not merely from records, but from actual remains. Even now, when the spirit of the nineteenth century would fain collect in its Crystal Palace the finest specimens of the art of the most varied climes and ages, it is compelled to devote a chamber to the reproduction of one of the courts of the exquisite Alhambra !

But with all these features of superiority, there still remain points wherein, as it seems to us, Mahometanism is decidedly inferior to some of the other false religions of the world. We mean that there are certain needs in human nature which the creed of Islam does not satisfy, and which other

'Cited in Mr. Ford's Handbook for Spain,' sec. iii. p. 372.

religions have at least attempted to satisfy. Writers who are anxious, as we are, to do justice to the merits of the Arab-born creed, but too often, we think, ignore this side of the question. It is not touched upon in any of the works which are named at the commencement of this article. And yet, unless it be duly taken into account, we shall surely obtain an imperfect, and perhaps an unduly favourable, estimate of Mahometanism.

Let it be granted, that the religions against which the Moslem hosts prevailed, had become exceedingly corrupt; and that it was not merely the power of the sword which laid them low: let it be granted, that there is a salt in Islamism, which has hitherto preserved it (at least in theory, and perhaps partially in practice) from a like corruption, from a like departure from its own original principles: still these religions found food for some cravings of the human mind, which were, in themselves, neither wrong or unnatural. Thus, for example, it is natural, and it is right, to imagine that the Divine nature must in itself, and much more when viewed by our finite comprehension, be full of mystery; it is natural to seek for something which shall bridge over the vast gulf between the human and the Divine, the Creator and the created; it is, above all, natural to seek to propitiate the Almighty by offering sacrifice, and by thus softening the otherwise appalling notion of Almighty power, as a thing before which man must simply prostrate himself, to associate the performance of duties with soothing rites, and temper fear with love. How fully Christianity 'Mr. Maurice is an exception.-Religions of the World, p. 56, et alibi.

supplies all these needs; how clearly it proclaims that, as there is a mystery of iniquity, so likewise is there a mystery of godliness; how thoroughly the doctrine of the One Mediation and the One Sacrifice, from which all other sacrifices derive their worth and meaning, is its central verity, we have already hinted, and must not, for the moment, pause to enlarge upon; but it is important to observe, that Magianism and the better forms of Buddhism, and even classic paganism, possessed something in these respects which Mahometanism has not. Magianism, though it had done its work when Mahomet appeared, and lost its pristine excellence, had probably been of real service in preparing the way for Christianity. That noble nation, whose religion it was, has the glory of numbering among its monarchs the one great heathen type of Christ our Lord; Cyrus, the destroyer of Babylon, the restorer of the chosen race to their home in Palestine. Thinkers, so differently trained as Keble, Hengstenberg, and M. Nicolas, agree in extolling both Persia and its creed, as among the best and fairest specimens of heathendom. A triad of deities, one eternal and two created and visible, of whom one fulfilled the office of Mediator; the immortality of the soul; the fall of the first man; the life to come, its bliss and punishment; resurrection of body and soul, and the three degrees of purity-purity of thought, of word, and of action; these doctrines are all claimed

''Ne... nobili persarum genti, quam proximè à suis Hebræis caram fortasse habuit Divina Majestas, iniquiores esse videamur.' Keble, Prælect Acad. [tom. ii. p. 819); Cf. Hengstenberg: Preface to Christology of the Old Testament. M. Nicolas, Etudes Philosophiques sur le Christianisme, tom. ii.