Ab, JOSEPH (we love the appropriate name), be content with this peaceful monarchy-fly from vainglory as from Potiphar's they were limited and special. France, for absurdly ignorant, and proud of their ignoher part, stipulates for the people and all rance, but because they have really such a people she has that which saves nations, superiority of their own, that they are satisunity; not that which destroys them, egotism. fied with it, and naturally must be careless For her to conquer provinces is well; to regarding humbler fame. All the world is conquer minds is better still. (603.) Charles instructed by them. "The politics, the I. died in his island, Europe took no notice: literature, the art, the science of the whole Louis XVI. perished, and the whole world universe," belongs to them. was in a flame. (613.) The ancient republics have passed away in the day when France shall be extinguished, there will be twilight on the face of the earth. (606.) wife. Be modest, Joseph, according to your But no, there is no such danger. France will have her natural boundary, and be content. The highest intelligences, which at the present moment represent the politics, literature, science, and art of the whole universe, France possesses them, and France gives them to civilisation. Satisfy her, then; and above all, reflect upon this, Europe can never be tranquil while France is not content." (625.) nature, and you shall rule over the land; the other children of Jacob shall come bowing before you, and you shall receive them with meekness and kindness; laying up granaries of wisdom to feed the nations in times of want, and being the chosen and upright friend of all. There is a great deal in M. Hugo's conclusion which we have been forced to pass over-the history of all the empires and republics of Europe-of the Spanish Armada, the Czar of Muscovy, the great Cham of Tartary, and Prester John; for all these things the reader is referred to the book itself, of which, unless it were transferred bodily to our pages, no one could form an accurate idea-perhaps not even then. But the great discovery of the book is decidedly JOSEPH. ART. VII. Exposé de la Religion des Druzes, tiré des Livres religieux de cette Secte, et précédé d'une introduction et de la Vie du Khalife Hakem-Biamr-Allah. Par M. LE BARON SILVESTRE DE SACY. 2 tomes 8vo. Paris, 1838. Here we have, in the poet's own modest words, the character and demands of his nation. And while he was making the latter, it must be confessed that the world ought to be somewhat grateful to him, for he only asks for a few hundred miles of extra territory, and might just as well have asked for Moscow and Cairo, for Spain and Canada, for every town or country which French robbers have overrun, or which have been sacked and ravaged by French fire and sword. The descendants of the Black Prince and Henry V., by exactly the same argument, might ask for their ancient inheritances, Gascony, Acquitaine, Normandy, and the kingdom itself. Did not Henry VI. possess it once? Nay, how long is it since General Müffling was governor of the capital, and the Germans masters of it? The Cossacks have just as good a claim to Paris as the THE land of Syria has been, from the earliest French to Cologne. Seeing, then, the end-period of history, the theatre of the most imless quarrels and inconvenience to which portant events and developments for the husuch discussions might give rise, would it man race. Conquests, colonies, maritime not be better for Monsieur Hugo to exert power and enterprise, spurious creeds and his gigantic influence among his country-divine revelation, have equally found their men, and induce them to be contented at birth-place there, and stamped and sanctified once, and with things as they are. Surely, the soil to human admiration. The bare according to his own showing, his country statement of these heads is not foreign to our is pretty well provided for. He has his in- immediate subject; for it is only by keeping tellectual superiority; "his Pascal for a in mind these earliest points of history and Pope; and what a pope!-his Voltaire for tradition, that we shall be enabled to illusan Antichrist; and what an Antichrist!" trate the present by the past, and prove the His gods-his devils are better than those of analogy between them. any other nation: he has his religion and his irreligion to be proud of. Before the fame of his people all other reputations are futile: "it took Shakspeare 150 years to be known in France," as he says; and the reason was, not because French people are The rude and imperfect triangle of Syria embraces in its outlines, north, east, and southwards, the contact of the once Persian, Arabian, and Egyptian kingdoms; while, on the western coast, it was approximated to Greece and Europe by the facilities of sea commu Egyptian pæan: no sooner does he withdraw the veil than laughter arises at the development or crocodile, or native snake, or some animal of his deity. Nothing meets the eye but a cat, fitter to burrow in the earth than to dwell there. The Egyptian god you behold in a beast, lying on a purple carpet."-Clem. Alex. Pœd. 3, 2. Lipsiæ. The worship of the calf, whether the Apis or Mnevis, (Sir G. Wilkinson inclines to the latter opinion,) appears to have been the clear practice of Israel, and derived from Egypt; it is further apparent that it was also a type of Osiris, and that its statues were golden. ,ערב is nication and the adventurous spirit of the Phoenician mariners. Of the Phoenicians, Syria is the latest, or only known residence; and portions of these, and of the Philistine, or Pali race, contested the dominion of the country with the chosen people of Israel. Notwithstanding the pure theocracy of the last, the Holy Scriptures bear ample evidence of their backslidings; and though the creed of the True God was preserved by their priesthood, and among the people generally, the frequent lapses of various families into idolatry, mark the strong tendency of man to amalgamation with his neighbours. If the Jews could so wander, despite the stern restrictions of their faith, as to admit the worst At the time of the Israelite Exodus, we Gentile abominations into their practice, are told, (Exod. c. xii., v. 38,) that "a mixwhich occurred with Ahab and Jeroboam ed multitude went out with them." The amongst others, it can be no wonder that the word signifying mixed multitude surrounding tribes, ignorant of the true God, Arab; and, possibly instigated by their exshould yet admit the rites or even supersti- ample, though this is immaterial, the Israeltions of the chosen race into their own sanc-ites insisted on worshipping the golden calf, tuaries; nor that the mutual confusion of the obvious relic of Egyptian idolatry, (traced creeds thus originated, should descend to to Egypt in ch. xxxii. 4,) and these rites their posterity; and hence the mystical jar- they renewed even in the days of Jeroboam; gons and religious blindness that have ever as we well know they also retained the lammarked Syria as Gentile, despite the origin-entations for Thammuz, and the mysteries of ation of Christianity itself in her bosom. the chambers of imagery, among the daughThe moral obscurity of Syria, thus engendered by superstition, was condensed and protracted by physical causes Abraham and his descendants were agriculturists; the Phonicians were cultivators as well as warriors, seamen, and builders; and the Pali were shepherds. The name of the land where all If we add to the foregoing sketch the histhese settled has been among other etymolo- torical fact, that king Josiah banished the gies derived, idly enough, from a rose, suri; calf-worship from the altars of Bethel, 620 it is quite as probable, from the foregoing years B. C., we shall see that, from the Exodus to this time, a period of 900 years, this premises, that it sprang from, sur, a bullock: and from all concurrent testimony we last-named idolatry had occasionally prevailknow that the Egyptians under this formed among the Israelites themselves, though worshipped Osiris, as the Apis or young bull, as well as the Mnevis; the first at Memphis, the latter at Heliopolis. Osiris, we also know, taught them husbandry and the arts of civilized life. There is thus direct evidence that the bull was the symbol of the husbandman; and we may fairly presume that the name of the symbol became the epithet of the soil. The following passage will indicate most graphically the effect of this worship upon other nations. ters of Zion, "Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch MILTON. with them it was prohibited. Among the heathen nations there can be no reason for imagining it ever ceased entirely, even to the time of Mahommed; that is to say, for 1200 years later than Josiah's reign; since we find, from ancient writers, that among other Egyptian superstitions, the rites of Thammuz, in Syria, were inherited from Egypt; and shall see presently, that so late as the sixth century of the Christian era that country preserved and respected the tradition, if not existence, of this venerable worship of "The temples, porticos, groves, gardens, and the calf. We further know, though darkly, vestibules of the Egyptians are adorned with that the idol abominations and bloody sacripillars and columns; the walls glitter with pre-fices of the Arabian tribes, so hateful to the cious stones and elaborate carving; the shrines Koran, were the same to a great extent, if are splendid with gold, silver, and amber. In- not entirely, as the practices of the Edomdia and Ethiopia supply them with rare materials. The adytum is veiled with golden tissue: but when you enter the recess of the temple, and expect to find something worthy of this preparation, a priest steps forward, chanting the ites, Amalekites, &c., which the names and rites abundantly testify. Thus then, for 1800 years and more, the same superstitions prevailed openly in Syria itself, without reckon ing the duration of calf-worship in Egypt previously and a creed of near 2000 years' duration is not likely to pass altogether from an ignorant, mixed, and trampled race. April, from their name, evidently Persian, and preserve many traces of the Assassin race of the Caucasus: the Maronites and Melchites are Christians, and differ chiefly in using, the The geographical position, too, of Syria former the Syriac, the latter the Arabic rituexposed her in every age to warfare and con- al: the Metualis are loosely stated to be Maquest. The scattered and vanquished tribes hommedans of the Omar sect, but are Shiahs would obviously flee to the mountains; and in reality, a fact at which we shall cursorily even where driven to embrace the religion of glance: while the religious tenets of the the conquerors, would secretly cling to and Druzes, cautiously concealed by themselves, cherish their own superstitions, and this pro- and thence invested with the usual attributes bably the more, inasmuch as each rival, of mystery by others, form the subject of our though vanquished, tribe sought to distinguish present inquiry. itself even less from the common conqueror This article will fill up an hiatus in history than from its neighbour in misfortune, by a left void by Gibbon, whose account of the strict adhesion to some distinctive traditional Druzes is simply as follows: system. The physical history of Syria was thus, as we noticed, accessary to the pre- their ignorance and hypocrisy." (The illus "The religion of the Druzes is concealed by servation of its moral type. We see, in like trious historian of the "Decline and Fall" was manner, the traditions of Scandinavian belief in error in this statement; there are reasons that retaining for a long time their hold in the will be developed in the course of this article north; and we need no argument to satisfy widely different from these for this concealus that the worship of the golden calf was the elect, who profess a contemplative life, and ment). "Their secret doctrines are confined to not likely, after so long an existence in Syria, the vulgar Druzes, the most indifferent of men, to disappear suddenly, in the 408 years be- occasionally conform to the worship of the Matween Mahommed and Hakem-Biamr-Allah, hometans and Christians of their neighbourhood. the reputed Imam of the Druzi faith. The little that is or deserves to be known may shall hereafter examine the proofs of identity be seen in the industrious Niebuhr's Voyages, with due reference to these preliminaries, the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Voltome ii., p. 354, 337, and the second volume of geographical, physical, and moral; but we ney."-vol. vii., p. 214. must first throw an eye over the political state of the Druzes at the present time. We The northern portion of Syria, from that about 100 square leagues, afford above 1,100 The Druzes, occupying a territory of section of its mountain range beginning near- souls to each league; and this amplitude is ly in latitude 33 N., is chiefly inhabited by attributed by Volney to their freedom and the tribes that are generally, but erroneously, simple habits. They are cultivators of the included under the name of Druzes, though soil, and after discharging the Turkish tribute these last are but one, and the most promin- and the rent, each man is proprietor of his ent, of several sects. The positions of those own land, in freehold. tribes are laid down with great exactness in evenings in the courts of their sheikhs' dwellThe men meet at Wyld's new and admirable map of Syria; ings to converse and smoke; they have the where, beginning northward, the Anzaris oc- right of nominating any one of their children cupy the country about the 35th degree of as heir; and in general espouse the widow latitude; the Maronites, the western side of of their brother. the mountains, and the sea-coast towards meat, but their food is chiefly vegetable ; They are fond of raw Beyroot, that is, beyond latitude 34; the consisting of onions, olives, and other fruits, Metualis, the parallel range of the country, cheese, slight loaves, and a little wine. eastward, between Libanon and Anti-Liba- Thus in war they are invaluable as irregunon; and the Druzes proper extend, from lars, being good marksmen and each bringalong these two heights and interjacent plain ing his own gun, bullets, and home-manufacof Bekaa, southwards to the 33d degree of tured powder; together with a bag of flour latitude generally; and from Tyre and the for his support. The leaders only have sea-coast, west, over the Haouran, towards horses, the rest fight on foot, and have neither Damascus, the seat of their emir, or Turkish discipline, order, nor uniforms. They are governor. The population of the Druzes summoned to war by the cry from mountainproper, reckoned forty years since at 120,000, tops, and a large force is promptly gathered: is stated by the same, and, we conceive, un- for every male of proved courage, and such deniable authority, at 186,000 now. Maronites are about 100,000; the Anzaris tion of the councils, held when peace or war The only, has a right to be present at the delibera22,000; and the Metualis and Yezdis, taken is to be decided on. together, 17,000 souls. The Anzaris are, The mulberry and the vine are everywhere cultivated; with tobacco, cotton, and grain. under the Fatimite caliph Hakem, surnamed The people are hospitable, and, according to Biamr-Allah; who forbade the pilgrimage to Burckhardt, never betray a guest: they do Mecca, fasting, and the five prayers of the not use circumcision; are proud, like the Islamite faith. He was supported by MaArabs, and Tatars, of the antiquity of their hommed-ben-Ismael-El Druzi, a Persian, who families; and preserve many customs of the was slain in a tumult; and Hamza, the great Jews, with whom they have been sometimes prophet of this heresy, succeeded to the charged with coalescing. The women are chief priesthood. The system which, comdomestic, and all wash, cook, make coffee, mencing from Heg. 408, numbered in 495, and bake bread, even in the sheikhs' houses. 16,000 votaries, is Persian or Ethiopic; and They are constantly veiled; and the Druze its route, we are told, may be traced even knows the face of none but his mother, and geographically by the names. Benjamin of wife, his sisters, and hers. Women are ex- Tudela mentions the Druzes; but neither he cluded from the succession. nor succeeding travellers down to De Tott, The emir is the governor appointed by and even Volney, appear to have known the Turks, and is never a Druze: but the much of this peculiar race: the justly celechief sheikh of the Druzes, whose residence brated Burckhardt is our latest and best auis at Soueida in the Haouran, and who is of thority on the subject, and subsequent writers their faith, is often confounded with the have added little to his reports of the Druzes. Turkish emir erroneously. The former is As the mountains produce little or no grain, said, by Burckhardt, to possess the real pow- the town of Beyroot is the entrepôt of this er over his co-religionists, though others commodity, the produce of Jaffa, Damascus affirm that he is not of the highest or spiritual and Alexandria. Libanon affords scarce any class; while the emir is the civil and military soil or pasturage; and silk is the chief producfunctionary who names the kadis, or judges, tion of the inhabitants, who even pay their and collects the miri, or tribute, part of which rents with it. The carriage and expenses, forms his own revenue. The miri is some- duty, &c., on this article to Damascus, have times as high as 180 purses-between £8000 risen from 13 1-2 to 29 piastres lately, which and £9000, and is levied on produce. The has created much discontent. The cultivation chief task of the emir is however to repress of the mulberry requires some outlay of capthe feuds of the sheikhs, who possess nearly one-tenth of the land; their succession is hereditary. An idle attempt was made about a century since to derive the Druzes from the crusader, De Dreux. ital. The Maronites are rich and independent: their princes, and those of the Druzes, being actuated by rivalry of power and wealth, lose no opportunity of mutual annoyance: the Shoba, the residence of many of the sheikhs, whole land, therefore, is in constant feud, is stated by Usborne, the latest traveller and the late ravage of the Haouran by the ("Guide to the Levant"), to be splendid, Bedouins has completed the disasters of the though ruined. The walls are in some country. places perfect; and eight paved causeways To elucidate sufficiently the very obscure lead from as many gates to the city. The subject of the Druzi origin, our inquiry takes streets are broad, paved, and regular; the separately the derivation and name of the doors of the houses are formed of a single Druzes, their creed of unity, the sects through stone slab; and in the centre of the town whom it was received, their catechism, and five Corinthian columns remains, upon a the general conclusions deducible from their terrace once supporting a magnificent temple. acknowledged belief and imperfect traditions. A substantial theatre, an aqueduct, and a mosque, all now in ruins, attest its former I-ETYмology and Origin of the Druzes. grandeur. The slightest glance at the religious sysThe Druzes are divided into three classes. tem of this nation convinces the observer that, The Akals, or initiated; the Djoheli, or as- however mingled and confused with the later pirants; and the vulgar, who know nothing and various tenets of Christianity and Mahomof religion. The Akali never swear, but medanism, the basis of the Druzi faith is to simply affirm; they avoid smoking, abuse, be found in Persia. De Sacy himself admitted gold and silken ornaments, and they eat and this fact, but only in general terms, that prove, drink apart. Their dress is black, or else most distinctly, he had no hopes of defining white that of the aspirants blue of the the source of the tenets of this race. And in vulgar, striped. Their language is Arabic; truth, while drawing the conclusion that those but they often use ciphers for their secret tenets originated, as he clearly shows, in the communications. Their creed is Unitarian. sect of Ali, and were consequently Persian, The system of the Druzes commenced | he intimates his belief, that the assumed pro phet, Imam Mahommed-ben-Ismael, was a Turk, from the name he bore, in contradiction to the Arabic historian, Elmacin, who calls him a Persian. The passage is remarkable on various points. "Darazi, suivant Elmacin, étoit un Daï, c'est à dire un missionaire de la secte des Baténis, et il étoit Persan. Je crois plutôt qu'il étoit Ture, car dans les livres des Druzes il porte le nom de Neschtekin, qui est incontestiblement Turc. Il se nommoit Mahommed, fils d'Ismael, et étoit surnommé Darazi, sans qu'aucun écrivain nous donne la raison de ce surnom."-vol. i., pp. 383, 384. ford, and which literature, to her shame, has not yet bestowed on her last, great benefactor: but with all the powers of research to collect, arrange, and simplify the mighty mass of information that illustrated every subject he touched upon, and brought its minutest details clearly before the eye, that profound but cautious scholar seldom ventured upon uniting the whole, or drawing the conclusion as a general result, however satisfactorily he disposed of each particular part. He supplies the materials for judging rather than the judg ment; the pleadings of the case, not the final sentence and hence it is that his mighty labours are the admiration of scholarship, and the illumination of the student, but seldom prove interesting to the public. The reading, as well as the active, world must indeed be satisfied to take much of its opinions upon trust; it has neither the leisure, ability, means, nor inclination, to form its own judgment upon what is offered; it cannot even distinguish at the outset between talent and imposture; but prefers any opinion to none ; and in the absence of genius and intellect, is satisfied to take up with the catchpenny impostor of the day. On the hopelessness felt by this great scholar of a full elucidation of the question we need give but one more instance, from his memoir; where in tracing the alleged superstition of the calf-worship to the time of Bôhaeddin, a follower of Hamza, he remarks, "it In contradiction to the general authority iş impossible to proceed higher on this point." of Arabian writers, and of El Macin in parBefore dwelling on the passages here quot- ticular, we have seen that De Sacy suspected ed we must observe, that it is, and has been, the Mahommed-ben-Ismael of being a Turk, not besetting error of all inquiry into the religious a Persian, and this on the simple evidence of and moral systems of the east, that the inves- his name; but had that illustrious scholar retigation has not, as it ought naturally to have flected on the early and wide diffusion of the done, proceeded fully upward; but, on the Turkish language in Tatary, before its pos contrary, an arbitrary point has been assessors migrated thence towards the Western sumed as the source of the peculiar tenets, and beyond this the explorer has not thought of essaying. Our readers will have already seen that the superstition of the calf extended from remotest antiquity to nearly the time of the Druzes; but before investigating more closely this single point of the subject, it may be necessary to take a wider view, and of the general question itself, than has been attempted by De Sacy; and we shall, in the proper place, while examining the grounds and origination of the Druzi faith, touch more or less lightly on all the speculative sources of religious error, in order to show that the system we would elucidate forms no exception, by its novelty, to the remark of Solomon, that "there is nothing new under the sun." Nor shall we be accused of being wanting in respect to the memory of the illustrious scholar whose latest work is now before us. His merits, and the advantages which learning has derived from his accurate judgment, cautious investigation, indefatigable labour, and vast and various erudition, demand far more than the passing notice we can here af Asia and to Europe, he must have seen that the terms of that language, or rather dialect, were necessarily common in the country of its origin, and among the co-descended tribes of those plains. He could scarcely have missed the fact that many of its words and combinations exist, not only with the Buriats, Monguls, and Tonghusi, but also in the tongues of various of the oldest races that people Hindostan, as well as Persia, the eastern part of which is largely Tatar, and appear even in the Celtic; and he would not have been surprised to find that the_very grave-stones of Derbend thus contain Tatar, rather than Turkish, words mixed with the Persian; words that have puzzled, but seem never to have struck with this true and simple solution the learned traveller, Eichwald. With this easy answer to the one sole ground of objection taken against the immediate Persian origination of the Druzi opinions, we must proceed to remind the English reader that the short mark ('), or a, the Arabic, d, and, r, does not give either the English or French sound, of a, but |