tion to battle at once. The convention, when France was in its death-grapple with all Europe, never mustered, on paper, more than a million of men round her standards, or four per cent of her population. Allowing for the impulse of poverty as stronger in Arabia than in France, we cannot set the population of the peninsula at less than fifteen millions, while it is more than probable that it greatly exceeded that number. This population dwelt, when it could, in fenced cities and strong defensible villages, a section only living in tents and the desert. The clans fought, and negotiated for plunder or territory; but their wars, though constant and bloody, were not internecine, and it was an understood rule that conquerors should not injure property more than they could help, fill wells, or cut down palm-trees. They had, moreover, some strong bonds of national cohesion. The tribes all spoke one tongue. The great majority either were, or fancied themselves to be, of one blood. They had one form of worship, -a cult, not a creed,-which compelled them to regard Mecca as sacred, and the Koreish, as the guardians of the sacred territory, as the highest among mankind. Above all, they had but one character and one social system. They were not divided by the democratic idea and the aristocratic idea, by religious feeling or sceptical feeling, by an antagonism of races or a conflict of classes. Every Arab was, in essentials, like every other: full of poetry and sentiment, with the greediness which, among poverty-stricken races, is a passion; with a knowledge of traditionary history, and consequently an ingrained reverence for pedigree; brave, accustomed to arms, and carrying the point of honour-revenge for insult or injury to the clan-almost to ferocity. All united, too, in the moral necessity of maintaining the neutrality of Mecca, and in respecting the blood of Maadd, the chieftain who, just one thousand years before, had rebuilt the power of a house which stretched back straight to Ishmael, and dying, left Mecca to the descendants whom the Arabs call the Koreish.

Mahomet, therefore, as the son of Abdallah, son of Abdul Mutalik, chief of the clan Koreish, was simply a cadet of the highest aristocracy in a land of aristocrats, a man of the only tribe from which princes could be expected to come; a man at least as well born as the descendants of any house in Europe not actually on a throne. Poverty, it must be remembered, does not in Asia affect pedigree. A Brahmin begging is greater than a Sudra reigning; and, though born poor himself, Mahomet stood from his birth armoured in wealthy relatives and highly-placed kinsmen. The child was born after his father's death, and, according to a custom still prevalent in Arabia among the population of the cities, was sent at once into the

desert to breathe a freer air, and lived for five years with a wandering tribe called by the Arabs the Sons of Saad. In the fifth year, Halima, his foster-mother, though fond of the child, was frightened by some symptoms of epilepsy, and restored him to his mother Amina; but Mahomet never forgot the kindness he had received. Thirty years afterwards, when he had become comparatively wealthy, he raised Halima from her poverty, and, after the lapse of half a century, the appeal of his foster-father instantly sufficed to release his clan, while his adopted relatives were offered wealth and position at their will. The only recorded incident of his childhood, apart from legends, was a visit to Medina with his mother; a visit which stamped itself so strongly on his memory, that at fifty he remembered every detail. În her return she died, leaving Mahomet, still a child, to the care of his grandfather, Abdul Mutalik. He speedily followed, and all power in Mecca passed to another branch of the Koreish, and away from his own immediate connexions. A wealthy and powerful uncle, however, Abu Talib, took charge of the boy, and became so attached to him that, after a life passed in struggles on his behalf, his last words were a prayer to his kinsmen to protect his nephew. With this uncle he made a journey into Syria, then a nominally Christian country, and took some part in a feud called the Sacrilegious War, because it began in the holy month, and violated, in the end, the sacred territory. Every year, too, he was present at the annual fair attended by Christians from Syria, Jews from the neighbourhood, and representatives of all the tribes of Arabia; and listened, as he tells us in the Koran, to the eloquent preaching of the Syrian Bishop Koss, and to the orators of the tribes as they contended with each other for the palm of eloquence. He was present also at a scene which, if he had not himself proscribed all art, his followers in after ages would have loved to paint. Owing to the absence of any central authority, Mecca was full of disorder, and the heads of four sub-clans of the Koreish, tired of the misery before them, met together at night, with Mahomet in their midst, and swore "by the avenging Deity to take the part of the oppressed, and see his claim fulfilled so long as a drop of water remained in the ocean, or to satisfy the claim from their own resources." Mahomet in after life declared, that he would not lose the recollection of having been present when that oath was taken for the choicest camel in all Arabia. Though thus admitted to council in right of his birth, his daily work was that of a shepherd, an office then deemed honourable, and, by his own account, he was singularly free from vice of every kind. The silent, lonely life must have done much to strengthen a mind naturally tender, and increase

that habit of brooding thought to which he was addicted through life, and for which he had presently an ampler opportunity.

Mahomet was twenty-five years old before any change took place in his career; and there is no reason to believe that his opinions were in the smallest degree in advance of those entertained by the same class of his countrymen. He was then asked by his uncle to take charge of a caravan, which Khadijah, a wealthy widow of their house, was about to despatch to Syria. He accepted the office, and travelled to Bostra, a place about sixty miles beyond the Jordan, whence he returned without adventure, and with a fair but moderate profit of cent per cent on the caravan. None of this profit was for himself; but during the journey he had gained something more valuable than his salary. That royal sweetness of nature which from boyhood distinguished Mahomet had so impressed a slave attached to the caravan, that, on his return, he besought his leader to present himself to the widow, with the tidings of his successful merchandise. The slave himself never tired of sounding the praises of the handsome agent, and Khadijah, a comely widow, fell deeply in love with him. She is said by Arabs to have been forty; but as she subsequently bore him six children, her age has been probably exaggerated. She gained her father's consent while he was tipsy, and offered Mahomet marriage, and his instant acceptance raised him at once to a place among the wealthy men of the city. The union was a happy one for thirty years. Khadijah left him entirely to his meditations, relieving him of all cares of business; and Mahomet, giving full swing to his natural temperament, wandered incessantly among the mountains which overlook Mecca, feeding his heart with reverie. None but those who have lived long among Asiatics can understand how an Oriental mind can brood over an idea. It is perhaps the most marked distinction between him and the Western man: the European thinks, the Oriental only reflects, and if left to himself the idea, turned over and over endlessly in his mind, hardens into the consistency of steel. Thenceforward it is part of the fibre of his mind, something on which argument is Îost, on which he at all times, and in all circumstances, bases immediate action. Mahomet had not, as the popular histories aver, given himself up to inquiries into Christianity and Judaism, nor is there any evidence that he ever talked with a Christian monk named Sergius or Nestorius, nor had he ever been taught by a follower of the Jewish Scripture; but he had from his earliest days been surrounded by the Jewish tribes settled in Arabia, and had learnt vaguely and imperfectly their more imaginative traditions, derived, it would seem, from the source whence Josephus derived his antiquities. We conjecture this

from the frequent recurrence of names which exist in Josephus's account, and not in the Law he professed to follow. He had also talked with Christian slaves, particularly an acute Greek, who became a disciple; and his mind brooded over the possibility of reconciling these creeds with the Pagan cult of Arabia. Gradually, perhaps very early, a horror of idol-worship arose in his mind, a belief in one true, impersonal, and absolute Deity, so strong and vivid as to colour his entire future life. How long his faith was in development, he has not informed us; but, once developed, it took entire possession of his mind. Brooding for months in solitude on the tops of the Hira range, he gradually obtained that ecstatic conviction, which in better creeds their followers term conversion, and with that conviction came the impression that it had been given for a purpose; that he had been selected to become the Messenger of the Most High, to preach the unity of the Godhead unto all mankind. Thenceforward he esteemed himself a specially chosen instrument, one whose reveries were revelations; and throughout his further life, under the most extreme temptation, and in the darkest adversity, Mahomet never for a moment swerved from his central belief: "God is the God: I am the Sent of God." When, years after, he lay hidden in a cave, with the footsteps of his pursuers sounding overhead, and Abu Bekr his only companion, he cheered his friend with the calm assurance, that though they were but two, God was the third. When a great tribe offered to follow him, and give him the sway of a third of Arabia, if he would leave to its chief some section of authority, he calmly answered, "Not one green date.” How could authority be shared with the Messenger of the Most High? This, and not the doctrine of conversion by the sword, was what he announced to his household; and it is perhaps the most marvellous fact in his history, that the three nearest to him, nearer than any valet ever was to his master, accepted his assurance of divine commission. Khadijah his wife, Ali his nephew, and Zeid his freedman, believed in his mission, treasured up the bursts of mystic poetry in which his first convictions were expressed, and after twenty years of suffering, protracted through every conceivable variety of disaster, remained steadfast in the faith that this man was verily sent of God.

It was in the forty-fourth year of his age (A.D. 614) that Mahomet first announced to the sneering Meccans that God had elected him Prophet of a Faith, which as its first step involved their secular ruin. Their importance depended on their character as hereditary guardians of Ozza and Lat, the two idols of the sacred shrine. If idolatry were a crime their office ended, and with it their rank in Arabia, the rich tribute of the tribes, the gains of the central mart, and the incalculable advantage

of the one city which no Arab dared attack. In exchange for this they were offered an idea; for the elevation of Mecca was not Mahomet's original intention-he rather leaned to Jerusalem. They sneered carelessly, for Mahomet was too strongly protected to be attacked, but they rejected him without any very great excitement or attention. Some few, however, chiefly among his own connexions, confided in him, ignorant that many, in accepting his statements, accepted also thrones and places in the front rank of human history. Abu Bekr, a chief of the Bani Saym, a sub-clan of the Koreish, listened to the new revelation gladly, and lived and died-refugee, soldier, vizier, and caliph― always the bosom friend and believing disciple of his kinsman. Saad, the next disciple, was a nephew of Mahomet's mother, Amina; Zoheir, the next, a nephew of Khadijah; Othman, the next, a grandson of Abdul Mutalik, Mahomet's grandfather; and Abdul Ruhaman, the fifth, was of the Bani Zohra, Amina's clan. Numerous slaves also announced their adhesion to the new opinions. Abu Bekr exhausted great wealth for an Arab in purchasing slaves who had been persecuted for their admiration of Mahomet, and from that day to this Islam has been distinguished by its adherence to one high principle. The slave who embraces Islam is free; not simply a freed man, but a free citizen, the equal of all save the Sultan, competent de facto as well as de jure to all and every office in the state. The total number was few, not five score; but after four years of preaching it had become sufficient to arouse discontent and enmity. The Koreish dared not attack Mahomet himself, for he was protected by his relatives; but they jeered at him, and threatened the disciples, who one by one dropped into the little house where he preached, still called the House of Islam, and took the oath of allegiance to the one God and his Messenger. So fierce became the persecution, that Mahomet sent some of his followers to Abyssinia, and even tried by a momentary concession to idolatry to gain them protection from assault. The Meccans heard with delight that he had named Ozza and Lat, the two great idols, as intercessors before the Throne; but the weakness lasted only a few days, and the storm, intensified by disappointment, raged more violently than ever. His uncle, Abu Talib, was compelled to threaten all who should attack him with death; and when, in the sixth year of his preaching, two powerful citizens, Omar and Hamza, professed themselves disciples, even his influence could not restrain the Koreish from proceeding to extremities. They solemnly placed all the descendants of Hashim, Mahomet's greatgrandfather, under the ban, refused to intermarry with them, or trade with them, or supply them with food, and drove them en masse into the quartier occupied by the relatives and descend