shall be entitled to the character of useful knowledge, or be something worse than useless. Accident threw in our way the Number before us; and we regret to say, that, taking it as a specimen of the Society's his torical and biographical labours, it would lead us earnestly to desire that they would leave such subjects alone. It is altogether a miserable performance, pompous, jejune, shallow, grossly inaccurate, and thoroughly irreligious. Part of it reads very much like a bad translation from some other language, or the English of a foreigner. The orthography of proper names is also foreign, and they are still more disguised by blunders, the credit of which must be shared between the Society's writer and the Society's printer. No Englishman who understood his mother tongue, would talk of living by the flesh and milk of camels,'-' of hills at a small distance from the coast,'of water less disgusting'; or would have felt himself under the necessity of making the display of consonants contained in the following sentence : All the schiechs who belong to the same tribe, acknowledge a common chief, who is called Schiech es Schuech, Schiech of Schiechs, or Schiech el Kbir.' This mode of writing sheikh el kebir, or kebeer, must have been copied from Niebuhr, or some German work. But where did the writer find the names of Naja (for Nedjed), Yaman (for Yemen), Deyar Beer (for Diar Bekir)? Where did he learn that Arabia was anciently divided into the Sandy, the Stony, and the Happy? Or that Tehama was reckoned by the Arabians a distinct province? Among authorities pompously arrayed in the foot-notes, we find Prideaux, Vie de Mahomet. This is amusing enough, as it is evident the French-looking name of the worthy Dean has occasioned his being mistaken by this learned writer for a French author. No one who had a competent knowledge of the subject, would have referred to Prideaux's Life of Mahomet as an authority; nor was it necessary to display any authority for the statement to which the note is annexed, which is too trite and vague to derive any advantage from it. In a note at the end of the Life, evidently from a different pen, the value of Prideaux as an authority is thus estimated. Prideaux will add little to our knowledge, 'but his book is not long.' We may say the same of the present publication. It will add nothing to useful knowledge, but it is not long, and the price is only sixpence. The fact is, however, that inaccurate works like the present, take away from knowledge; and the cheaper and shorter a bad work is, the greater the evil. This is not the only discrepancy between the Life' and the 'Note.' The author of the former recommends the article Mahomet' in Bayle. In the latter, Bayle is not mentioned, but it is very properly stated, that the French writers of the eighteenth century are unsafe guides.' "Their con'clusions are generally well drawn from false data. So with Voltaire.' Bayle is no better authority than Prideaux. What we have chiefly to complain of, however, in the present Life of Mahomet, is the exquisite coxcombry which the Writer displays in the attempt to sustain the character of a philosophical historian. The first twelve pages of the Life are occupied with Introductory matter, abounding with such mere twaddle as the following. GOVERNMENT. The The various provinces were split into small, independent states, possessing governments apparently different, though essentially the same. In some a single prince, in others, the heads of tribes, who were really a band of princes, ruled like the rajahs of Indostan, or the satraps of Persia, with despotic sway over the people within their dominion. To this dominion there was no check but the dread of insurrection: there were no established forms in the government, no certain and specified laws, by which it could be controlled; neither did the manners of the people serve to diminish its mischievousness. Insurrection was the only existing check; and did no doubt in part keep down the atrocities of these rulers; but be it remembered that in every stage of society misery to a lamentable extent may be produced before the people can determine to brave the difficulties and dangers of an insurrection. Still more completely to ensure the subjection of the people, these rulers seized upon the functions and powers of religion. The ruling men were invariably the priests of the people, the propounders of oracles, and the guardians of the temples and idols. mysterious terrors of religion were thus added to the real dangers attendant on an opposition to the will of the governors. That will consequently was almost despotic. "After the expulsion of the Jorhamites, the government of Hejaz seems not to have continued for many centuries in the hands of one prince, but to have been divided among the heads of tribes; almost in the same manner as the Arabs of the deserts are governed at this day. At Mecca an aristocracy prevailed, where the chief management of affairs, till the time of Mahommed, was in the tribe of Koreish; especially after they had gotten the custody of the Caaba from the tribe of Kozrah." But if the government were not better than that of the desert tribes, miserable indeed must have been the situation of the people. When men are congregated into cities, if every one be allowed to gratify his revenge, and punish his enemy, without recurring to the arbitration of the magistrate, the state must necessarily become one continued scene of violence and bloodshed. No security for person or property existing, there could be no accumulation, so that the horrors of poverty must necessarily have been added to the other evils arising from unceasing terror and alarm. Such was in reality the situation of the Arabian cities; every man sought to redress, by his own power, the injury he fancied he had received; and the peace and happiness of the community were destroyed. The heads of tribes, moreover, waged continual war with each other. In the desert they were sufficiently willing to take offence at each other's conduct: opportunities of offence, however, on account of the immense extent of these desert regions, were far less frequent than within the narrow bounds of a city. Contact created rivalry— rivalry in power, in display, in enjoyment: rivalry begat hatred; and hatred bloodshed. To gratify the morbid vanity of a chief, the whole tribe was in arms.' pp. 4, 5. 6 We have several paragraphs of similar verbage about ' Law' and Religion.' The latter subject, the Writer should not have meddled with. He tells us, indeed, that 'We' enlightened Christians of modern times have now almost universally ceased 'to regard our own faith as at all concerned in the estimation that may be formed of the character, opinion, conduct, or religion of Mahomet. As our interests have become less con'cerned, our judgements have become less impartial.' No part of this representation is quite correct. Impartiality is by no means the natural result of indifference, and still less so of a pseudo-philosophical liberalism. The cause of truth cannot be served by the employment of calumny directed against a false system; but our estimate of a false religion must of necessity be regulated by our belief in the true, and our own faith is thus very greatly concerned in the matter. Again, our Historian asserts, that The conception which an ignorant and trembling savage forms of the character of the Divinity, and the means by which he endeavours to secure his favour, are in every age and country the same. He conceives the Godhead as irritable and revengeful; endowed with the moral weaknesses of humanity, but possessed of irresistible power. Heaven, in the imagination of the barbarian, is a picture of the earth, with this addition, that every circumstance is magnified. In Heaven there are more delightful gardens, more delicious and balmy airs, more brilliant skies, than on earth. The beings who inhabit the heavens are more powerful, more wise, or rather, more capable of obtaining the objects they desire, than men; they are endowed with everlasting life, and subject to no diseases that afflict humanity. To please these divine beings, the trembling votary pursues the means that are found efficacious with earthly potentates. He prostrates himself before them in adoration; he exaggerates their perfections, and soothes them with continued adulation. To prove himself sincere, he subjects himself to useless privations; performs frequent, painful, fruitless, and expensive ceremonies. He subjects himself to fasts; he multiplies the observances of religion, and throws away his substance in manifestation of their honour. Solicitude in the regulation of his conduct, as it regards his own happiness, or that of his fellows, being intimately connected with his own interests, is considered no proof of the sincerity of his professions towards the Divinity. The laws of morals, therefore, form but a small part of the religious code of any barbarous nation. The religion of the barbarous Arabian differed in no one particular from the foregoing description.'-p. 6. In this cheap mode of generalizing, what is true, is trite; but the want of discrimination renders the total statement incorrect. It is the very reverse of true, that the conceptions of the savage respecting the Deity, are in every age and country the same. But we cannot stop to point out the various flaws in the Writer's philosophy. He is not less astray in his facts. It is incorrect, that Mohammed established an 'absolute despotism,' or that he was elected' by his countrymen. Medina is not a country.' The Arabs have not been almost universally deemed a gentle and polite people;' the grossest ignorance could alone ascribe that character to the tribes of the Peninsula. The Jews did not form powerful nations in Arabia in the time of Niebuhr! Mohammed could not be ignorant of the Syrian language.' It is not likely, that the power of his family rendered it impossible to punish or to interrupt the first steps he made towards propagating his religion': the fact was otherwise. We pass over the insidious remarks upon the miracles ascribed to the Arabian heresiarch they sufficiently indicate the school to which the Writer belongs. We charge him, however, with no irreligious intentions; but we do consider the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge as grossly committed and dishonoured by this miserable Life of Mahomet.' Art. XII. The Opening of the Sixth Seal. A Sacred Poem. Second Edition. 12mo. pp. 180. Price 5s. 6d. London. 1829. IT is curious enough, that this is the second poem that has lately fallen into our hands, the Author of which has felt it necessary to inform his readers, that he has not been indebted for his ideas to Mr. Pollok's "Course of Time." The present Writer wishes it to be understood, that he did not peruse that publication until he had concluded his own task; and then it was with surprise and regret that he remarked the resemblance between the close of the First part of the Opening of the Sixth Seal, and a portion of the Course of Time. Comparisons are invidious; and we shall therefore simply lay before our readers a sample of the present poem, leaving them to form their own judgement of its positive and comparative merits. Of space In the realms innumerable worlds revolved In their etherial orbits. Suns on suns, With their attendant systems, rolling pathed Roaming through ether, but in bounds prescribed Held planetary orbs their mystic dance, That never had known change; worlds above worlds, And, in the centre of the wondrous whole, So they went on in harmony, and knew By listening seraphs, in their viewless flight But suddenly there came a rushing sound, Though in their flight than tempest winds more swift, Stayed in their mid career;—all things stood still, So vast the shock, huge mountains from their roots The dwellers of the earth the trumpet cry |