Elmacin. p. 185.

Elmacin.

p. 298.

and virtuous; not religion, for through all the changes of belief which the East has undergone, the evil and the effect have remained the same.

Mahommed inculcated the doctrine of fatalism, because it is the most useful creed for a conqueror. The blind passiveness which it causes has completed the degradation, and for ever impeded the improvement of all Mahommedan nations. They will not struggle against oppression, for the same reason that they will not avoid the infection of the plague. If from this state of stupid patience they are provoked into a paroxysm of brutal fury, they destroy the tyrant; but the tyranny remains unaltered. Oriental revolutions are like the casting a stone into a stagnant pool; the surface is broken for a moment, and then the green weeds close over it again.

Such a system can produce only tyrants and slaves, those who are watchful to commit any crime for power, and those who are ready to endure any oppression for tranquillity. A barbarous and desolating ambition has been the sole motive of their conquering chiefs; the wisdom of their wisest sovereigns has produced nothing of public benefit: it has ended in idle moralizings, and the late discovery that all is vanity. One Tyrant at the hour of death asserts the equality of mankind; another, who had attained empire by his crimes, exposes his shroud at last, and proclaims that now nothing but that is left him. I have slain the Princes of men, said Azzud ad Dowlah, and have laid waste the palaces of Kings. I have dispersed them to the East and scattered them to the West, and now the Grave calls me, and I must go! and he died with the frequent exclamation, What avails my wealth? my empire is departing from me!... When Mahmoud, the great Gaznevide, was dying of consumption in his Palace of Happiness, he ordered that all his treasures should be brought out to amuse him. They were laid before

him, silk and tapestry, jewels, vessels of silver and gold, coffers of money, the spoils of the nations whom he had plundered: it was the spectacle of a whole day,.. but pride yielded to the stronger feeling of nature;.. Mahmoud recollected that he was in his mortal sickness, and wept and moralized upon the vanity Rev. des of the world.

Marigny.

Arabes. t. 1. P. 298.

It were wearying to dwell upon the habitual crimes of which their history is composed; we may estimate their guilt by what is said of their virtues. Of all the Abbassides, none but Mutaded equalled Almanzor in goodness. A slave one day, when fanning away the flies from him, struck off his turban, upon which Mutaded only remarked that the boy was sleepy; but the Vizir who was present fell down and kissed the ground, and exclaimed, O Commander of the Faithful, I never heard of such a thing! I did not think such clemency had been possible!..for it was Elmacin. the custom of this Caliph, when a slave displeased him, to have p.226. Abul the offender buried alive.

The Mahommedan sovereigns have suffered their just punishment; they have been miserable as well as wicked. For others they can feel no sympathy, and have learnt to take no interest: for theniselves there is nothing but fear; their situation excludes them from hope, and they have the perpetual sense of danger, and the dread of that inevitable hour wherein there shall be no distinction of persons. This fear they have felt and confessed; in youth it has embittered enjoyment, and it has made age dreadful. A dream, or the chance words of a song, or the figures of the tapestry, have terrified them into tears. Haroun Al Raschid opened a volume of poems, and read, Where are the Kings, and where are the rest of the world? They are gone the way which thou shalt go. O thou who chusest a perishable world, and callest him happy whom it glorifies, take what the world can give thee, but death is at the end! And at these

p. 183.

Elmacin. p. 153.

words, he who had murdered Yahia and the Barmecides, wept aloud.

In these barbarous monarchies the people are indolent, because if they acquire wealth they dare not enjoy it. Punishment produces no shame, for it is inflicted by caprice not by justice. They who are rich or powerful become the victims of rapacity or fear. If a battle or fortress be lost, the Commander is punished for his misfortune; if he become popular for his victories, he incurs the jealousy and hatred of the ruler. Nor is it enough that wealth, and honour, and existence are at the Despot's mercy; the feelings and instincts must yield at his command. If he take the son for his eunuch, and the daughter for his concubine; if he order the father to execute the child, it is what Destiny has appointed, and the Mahommedan says, .. God's will be done. But insulted humanity has not unfrequently been provoked to take vengeance; the monarch is always in danger, because the subject is never secure; these are the consequences of that absolute power and passive obedience which have resulted from the doctrines of Mahommed; and this is the state of society wherever his religion has been established.

But when Islamism entered Spain, it was in its youth and vigour; its destructive principles had not yet had time to develope themselves; and its military apostles could safely challenge corrupted Christianity to a comparison of creeds. No nation. had yet been able to resist them; they had gone on from victory to victory. With the majority of mankind the successful cause passes for the right one; and when there were so many motives for conversion, it is not to be wondered at that the greater number of the Spanish Goths became converts to a triumphant faith. When in the first years of that faith Amrou led an army against Gaza, the Governor asked, for what reason the city was attacked.

p. 23.

Our Master, replied Amrou, has sent us to conquer you, unless ye receive our religion; do this and ye shall be our companions and brethren. If ye refuse this, pay a yearly tribute for ever, and we will protect you against all invaders. If neither of these terms Elmacin. be accepted, there can be only the sword between us, and we must war upon you in obedience to the command of the Lord. This was the system of the Mahommedans, and hitherto no policy could have succeeded better. The Christians who retained their religion became a kind of Helots, who supplied the revenue and cultivated the land; they were every where the minority, and as Mahommedan states grew round them on all sides, it was not long before they disappeared. The Moors found the same obsequiousness in Spain as they had done in Africa and in the East. The main part of the men apostatized, and the women contentedly learnt a new creed, to qualify themselves for foreign husbands, or for the renegados who profited by the ruin of their country. But there yet remained Gothic valour and Gothic genius. Pelayo baffled them with a troop of mountaineers, the wreck and remnant of the nation. This hero was strengthened by the accident of his royal descent ; but it was not for his birth that his fellow soldiers lifted him upon a shield, and in the hour of difficulty and danger acclaimed him King. In a strong country, with the defiles of which he was well acquainted, he maintained himself against the neighbouring Moors. His own weakness was his best security; foes like these were beneath the notice of the conqueror; he who had overthrown the kingdom of the Goths did not stop to exterminate a handful of banditti. Once already had Musa crost the Pyrenees and advanced as far as Carcassonne: he now proposed to overrun France, proceed through Germany and Hungary to Constantinople, and by this line of conquests, connect Spain with the Saracen empire. For this enterprize he was

C. 3.

preparing when a courier seized the bridle of his horse, and commanded him in the Caliph's name to set out for Damascus. There was retribution in this. Musa had imprisoned Tarif because he envied his glory; he himself was now arrested in his own career, and detained in Syria, while secret orders were sent to destroy his whole family. All who were in Africa were cut off. His son Abdalazis, a man worthy of a better fate, had been left governor in Spain; but the commanders of every town at this time exercised independant authority, and his power was little more than nominal. To strengthen himself by conciliating the Christians, he married Egilona, widow of the late King; Bleda. 1. 3. her foolish bigotry was one occasion of his ruin. Finding it impossible to convert her husband, she placed saint-images in all her apartments, and made the doors so low that he could not enter, without bowing his head before her idols. The Moorish Chiefs interpreted this as an artifice on his part to entrap them into a gesture which was an acknowledgment of their inferiority. His views were too generous for their comprehension. He wished to introduce the Gothic forms of freedom, and with that view assembled them in a Cortes. They murdered him, that the anarchy might continue. His head was sent to DaCardonne.1. mascus, and the Caliph bade Musa look, if he knew the face. The broken hearted old man retired to Mecca, seeking there for that consolation, which, such is the blessed nature of religion, every religion however corrupted, can in some degree bestow; and there he ended his days.

p. 93-113.

Spain was so distant from the capital of the Caliphs, that they were continually exerting their authority there, lest their weakness should be discovered. For this reason it was their policy frequently to change the Governor, a system every way pernicious, which allowed integrity no time to be useful, and hurried avarice into rapacity. A few plundering expeditions were made