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woman's face. Inest sua gratia parvis; but we willingly give up the pleasure of such investigations to the virtuosi of the Ulemah; observing, however, for the credit of modern professors, that the furious zeal of the disputants on these matters has much diminished. The Sonnite as well as the Persian doctor has mitigated his prejudices, admits that his rival "is a believer, because he recognizes the holy mission of Mahomet and worships God," and would be ashamed of the polemics in which he once indulged, and of which we subjoin a specimen, (from a work by Thompson, a traveller in 1744,) being a denunciation of a Turkish mufti against a Persian divine, for various sectarian enormities, and, amongst the rest, the profanation of the holy color, green, to the formation of shoes and breeches.

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In short, ye are the kennel of all sin and uncleanliness-Christians and Jews may hope to become true believers, but as for you, Persians, it is impossible.-Wherefore, by virtue of the authority I have received from Mahomet, I pronounce it lawful for any one, of what nation soever of true believers, to kill, destroy, and extirpate you.And I hope that the majesty of God in the day of judgment will condemn you to be the asses of the Jews, to be rode and hackneyed in hell by that contemptible people."

Political differences, in the first instance, occasioned this flame of bigotry, and the removal of such causes of offence may since have tended to quench it.-Comparative indifference to the observance in their full rigor of the formal rites and distinctions of their ancestors, has of late been often remarked among the more enlightened of the Moslem nations; and when feelings of mutual forbearance (to whatever cause they may owe their origin) once exist to any extent, who can doubt that the periodcal pilgrimages, in which the various nations of the earth, professing the same faith, meet to perform together the most sacred offices of their religion, must have a powerful tendency to increase their influence?

"It is here" (says Ali Bey) "that the grand spectacle of the pilgrimages of Mussulmen must be seen; an innumerable crowd of men from all nations and of all colors, coming from the extremities of the earth, through a thousand dangers and encountering fatigues of every description, to adore together the same God, the God of nature. The native of Circassia presents his hand in a friendly manner to the Æthiopian or the negro of Guinea-the Indian and the Persian embrace the inhabitant of Barbary and Morocco, all looking on each other as brothers, as individuals of the same family, united by the bonds of religion, and the greater part speaking or understanding the same language, the language of Arabia.-No! there is not any religion that presents to the senses a spectacle more simple, affecting, and majestic!"

If this were a fit place for entering on such a discussion, we should be happy, before we concluded, to give some details, which we have taken considerable pains to collect, concerning a sect which has risen into notice since the dissertation of Sale, and forms, we think, a striking æra in the history of the Mahometan creed; we allude to that of the Wahhabites, whose principles of religious reform seem deserving of notice from the philosophic historian, for their general rationality and simplicity, as well as on account of their being grounded on a revival of the fundamentals of the Moslem system, on the broad and simple principles which graced the prophet's original conceptions, without entering into any of the dogmatic speculations or minute points of doctrine which have characterized every other sect, as because they owe their rise and support to the same class of persons, among whom, on the same spot, the faith of Mahomet originally appeared. Their founder has certainly had the judgment to bring into prominency only that which was good, valuable, and beneficial to the cause of reason, and morality, in the faith of his country; to enter completely into the spirit of its first promulgator, and to purge away the corruption which time and the sordid interests of its professors had heaped around the fabric. Despising the ceremonials and traditionary superstitions which he had been taught to regard as the essence of religion, he alone has ventured to revive and act upon the memorable words of Mahomet, uttered before bad passions had diverted the purer and more enlarged current of his feelings;

"It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces in prayer towards the east and the west, but righteousness is of him who believeth in God and the last day, and the angels, and the scriptures, and the prophets; who giveth money for God's sake unto his kindred, and unto the orphan, and the needy, and the stranger, and those who ask, and for redemption of captives; who is constant in prayer and giveth alms; and of those who perform their covenant when they have covenanted, and who behave themselves patiently in adversity and hardships, and in time of violence; these are they who are true, and these are they who fear God."-chap. 2.

We must apologize for this long excursion into matters of no very general interest, and take our leave of the subject, not, however, without some intention to return to a part of it, probably in connexion with the Moorish dynasty of Spain.We wish we could flatter ourselves with the hope of receiving much assistance from the researches of those who have followed in the train of our enlightened countryman. Modern historians run little hazard of being stiled "half Mussulmans," they have not had a tythe of one in their composition; they have done little more than re-cast, one after

another, what their immediate predecessors had in the same way borrowed; and to none is this observation more applicable than to a late historian of Mahometanism. From the excellence of the work we allude to, as a convenient, and in many respects elegant digest of popular materials, we would by no means detract; but we are very much inclined to believe that a diligent inquirer, properly qualified for the task, might, at this time of day, with all the opportunities which are now within the reach. of one who knew how to avail himself of them, present the world with a work which should really be one of research into the literature of the Saracens, and should not content itself with retailing the observations of others; passing over, for instance, the Moorish dynasty in Spain, the most splendid and interesting portion of the inquiry, one that well deserves and would richly repay the pains it would require, in three or four pages of pompous, historical common-places, as if it were all perfectly familiar to the author, but was unworthy of detailed consideration.

ART. II. The Voyage of France; or, a Compleat Journey through France; with the Character of the People, and the Description of the chief Towns, Fortresses, Churches, Monasteries, Universities, Palaces, and Antiquities; as, also, of the Interest, Government, Riches, &c. by Peter Heylin, D.D. Lond. 1679.

We are incessantly reminded, in our excursions into the bye-paths and obscure corners of literature, of the delusions of authorship, and the "high fantastical" desire of fame. In the breasts of some, indeed, it glows with an intense and purifying flame, which may serve, like the pillar of fire to the children of Israel, to guide them through the wilderness of life with safety and honor. But fame hangs upon the balance of a straw, which the wind turns in favor of those who least expect it. A lucky conception-a casual association, may lead to achievements, which, in a short space of time, secure that which the learned industry of a whole life may look for as vainly, as the man who, bent double with the weight of years, sought for the youth he had lost in the sand; and even when the steep of fame has been won, a man may walk a beggar through the world with a wreath of laurel round his head, or breathe out the last sigh of disappointed wishes in a goal.-The happiness it held out is as fleeting as its promised cause is uncertain." The summerswallow is flown; the fuel of his expended hours is consumed;

the veil which kept him from discovery of himself removed;" the fire of his nostrils is extinguished, and the glory of his course ended. What signify to him the pomp and glory of a ceremonious funeral, or the lamenting elegies of the poet, or the annual celebration of his birth-day? Posthumous fame, after all the fine sentences that have been lavished upon it, is the emptiest bubble that dances on the surface of existence-the most unsubstantial pageant emblazoned on the tomb of the departed. The blast which issues from the trumpet of fame, and which the hills echo to the valleys, and they again re-bound to the next hills, reaches not the ears of the dead, and is as little regarded as the silver cherubims and bugles which glitter on their coffins.-Yet even the tree planted by the visionary enthusiast may, in time, produce fruits for the benefit of the species, if not of the individual-and this longing after nominal immortality—this "last infirmity of noble minds," may, like the sharp excrescence under the pinion of the ostrich, stimulate man in his flight from present danger to future security, from indolent quiescence to glorious freedom of mind and person.

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We were pondering on the learned labours and unquiet life of Dr. Heylin, when this train of reflection presented itself.Ensuing times" have not had the curiosity to inquire how this geographer, divine, poet, and historian, employed his hours. With which of his thirty-seven publications is the world acquainted? The book-worm alone travels over, and is skilled in his elaborate pages, from his Cosmography to the History of St. George, from his Sermons to his Polemical Pamphlets. The fine-spun threads of his wit are entangled in the subtle web of the spider. The student no longer

"From breakfast reads, till twelve o'clock,

Burnet and Heylin, Hobbes and Locke."

His Cosmography, although a book of great industry and research, may now be bought by the weight or for the worth of the paper to the cheesemonger. The housekeeper may purchase food for the body, and have food for the mind into the bargain he may chance to get the Kingdom of Italy with a piece of Parmasanne, or one of the Seven Provinces with a pound of butter.-He may, without any miraculous luck, buy the best Rochelle wrapped up in the attic salt of the doctor, a strange and heterogeneous combination!

Dr. Heylin was born in 1599, and is represented as having exhibited an extraordinary precocity of intellect. At the age of seventeen he wrote an English tragedy, called Spurius-at nineteen he read his Cosmographical Lectures at Oxford, where he drew the whole society into a profound admiration of his

learning and abilities-in the same year, he produced a Latin comedy, called Theomachia, which he composed in a fortnight -at twenty-one he proceeded Master of Arts, and in the following year published his geography, which was afterwards enlarged, and re-published under the title of "Cosmography," and has gone through seven editions. We do not mention this as any proof of its value-Chamberlaine's State of Great Britain has passed through between thirty and forty!

Our author afterwards took orders and was made chaplain to Charles the First, and, on the restoration, to Charles the Second. Being a zealous churchman and royalist, he became obnoxious to the presbyterians, who deprived him of his little all, not even excepting his library.

It was Dr. Heylin to whom the king committed the Histriomastix of Prynne, to select such passages as were scandalous or dangerous to the monarch or the state, a task which he performed with great expedition, and delivered them, together with his inferences, to the attorney-general. Prynne, on his release from prison, attempted to revenge himself, by bringing the doctor before the committee for the courts of justice, on a charge which did not succeed.

The book, which it is our more immediate object to notice, was the offspring of a flying tour of six weeks, in the year 1625; a brief visitation, to be sure, to write a book upon, and yet modern authors have thought proper to adopt the same plan. This volume, however, we assure our readers, is of a most amusing description, and indicative of great reading and acquirements, for the age at which it was written.-It is full of the effervescence of young life and animal spirits.-The air of France seems to have actually converted the author into a Frenchman, whose vivacity, point, and badinage, he seems to have imbibed. -The very moment he touched the Gallic soil he cast away his canonicals, and became the most facetious and joyous of good fellows, the most lively of tourists. He joked with the courtezans, and drank his bumper with the jolly friars.

"As I travelled to Orleans," says he, "we had in the coach with us three of these mortified sinners; two of the order of St. Austin, and one Franciscan, the merriest crickets that ever chirped. Nothing in them but mad tricks and complements, and for musick they would sing like hawks; when we came to a vein of good wine, they would chear up themselves and their neighbour with this comfortable doctrine, Vivamus ut bibamus, et bibamus ut vivamus and for courtship, and toying with the wenches, you would easily beleeve it had been a trade, with which they had not a little been acquainted. Of all men when I am married, God keep my wife from them, and till then my neighbour's."

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