culation could have anticipated. . . His military triumphs awakened no pride or vain glory, as they would have done had they been effected for selfish purposes. The riches which poured in upon him from the spoils of war, were expended in promoting the faith, and in relieving the poor among its votaries, insomuch that his treasury was often drained of its last coin. . However he betrayed the alloy of earth after he had worldly power at his command, the early aspirations of his spirit continually returned, and bore him above all earthly things."

That a torrent of success so unexpected that it probably seemed to himself miraculous, left him some virtue and some humility is perhaps more surprising than that it should have wakened the more earthy and heathen part of his nature, and caused him at times to forget his sincere love and admiration of goodness. To that love and admiration, and the persevering energy with which he expressed them, whether with or without the aid of imposture, the world owes the civilizing and humanizing stream of science, arts, literature, and philosophy, which flowed like balm over great part of Asia and Africa, replacing the lowest idolatry and fetichism by a knowledge of the only true God, and a devotion which is allowed by Christian observers to be more intelligent, absorbing, and vital, than a purer faith can always induce.*

"The completeness of its mental domination is one of the most noted and best ascertained facts in the early history of Mahometanism," says Dr. Forster. "It is legible in the high enthusiasm which characterized the first Moslems, from the near friends of the prophet to his meanest followers, from the leaders of the Saracen armies to the servile refuse of the camp. The rude idolatry of Scythia or of inner Africa, and the refined and venerable superstition of the Persian Magi, alike fell pros trate before the law of the Koran; while the new converts, bound together as brethren by this common tie, forgot their personal

*Sir William Jones, on his voyage to India, found in the island of Johanna, a secluded speck in the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa, the following inscription in Arabic, over the door of a mosque :

The world was given us for our own edification,

Not for the purpose of raising sumptuous buildings;

Life for the discharge of moral and religious duties,
Not for pleasurable indulgences;

Wealth to be liberally bestowed,

Not avariciously hoarded;

And learning to produce good actions,
Not empty disputes.

prejudices and national antipathies, as they fought side by side for the propagation of their adopted faith."

We could gladly follow Mr. Irving through the marvellous career of the new faith; the dissensions which ensued when its founder, far from providing for a dynasty, died without even naming a successor, taking care only, like some good Christian clergyman, that his pulpit should be supplied; the suddenness with which the scattered and rival clans of the Arabian peninsula, forgetting for the first time their domestic hostilities, acknowledged one spirit of unanimity and fraternal fellowship; the rapidity with which Islam, encountering simultaneously the rival empires of Rome and Persia in the East, established itself upon the ruins of Christianity and the Magian superstition, and the long train of splendor marking its course for a period of twelve hundred years. "Within twelve years after the Hegira," says one authority, "thirtysix thousand cities, towns, and castles are said to have been subjugated by the new conquerors; four thousand Christian temples destroyed, and fourteen hundred mosques erected. Africa was soon subdued, and the Moors converted to the new religion, who in their turn descended into Spain, there to establish a magnificent empire. The victorious standard of the crescent was raised on the cold mountains of Tartary and on the burning sands of Ethiopia. The Moslem empire extended from the Atlantic to Japan, across the continents of Asia and Africa, into Spain, and into France as far north as the Loire." Under its influence, Bagdad had a college of six thousand pupils and professors; grand Cairo, twenty colleges and a royal library of one hundred thousand manuscripts; Cordova, a library of two hundred and eighty thousand volumes; the kingdom of Andalusia, more than seventy libraries; mathematics, astronomy, anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and botany were pursued far in advance of all the rest of the world of that day, and, in short, the whole treasury of knowledge and elegance in possession of the converts of him whom it has been the fashion to represent as a mere charlatan, playing tricks upon the world's credulity for his own private advantage.

But we forbear, lest we be found writing a book upon a book. Our parting word shall be this: - We will consent to

see Mahomet placarded as an impostor, when the world is ready to mete out the same measure to every religious teacher who thinks "economy advisable in the dispensation of truth; to every Christian minister who subscribes to a solemn creed for substance of doctrine," some particulars of which he does not believe, or who acknowledges among his brethren more liberality of sentiment than he considers "safe" for the people of his charge; to every writer who wilfully devises claptrap; to every politician who uses, to serve his own purposes the nation's good being identical with his own, of course party watchwords which he knows to be founded on wrong or misapprehension in the multitude; to every leader, in short, who, in his zeal for the instruction of the people, alters, disguises, or embellishes the truth. Of odium thus equitably distributed, we honestly believe Mahomet could afford to accept his full share.

ART. II.— The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; with Dissertations on the Sources of the Writings of St. Luke, and the Ships and Navigation of the Ancients. By JAMES SMITH, Esq., of Gordanhill, F. R. S., &c. London: Longmans. 1848. 8vo. pp. 307.

THE author of this book is an English gentleman of education, fortune, and leisure, "a yacht sailor of more than thirty years standing," who has concentrated all the resources of extensive study, observation, and maritime experience on the illustration of the narrative of St. Paul's shipwreck. The result has been, in the first place, the identification of every locality, the delineation of every nautical equipment and manœuvre, and the verification of every incident recorded by the sacred historian; and, secondly, the accumulation of materials of unprecedented copiousness and interest as regards the construction and management of ancient ships. On account of the large amount and variety of general information which it furnishes, and also because of the numerous authorities on our table this is the only recent publication, we have selected it as a text for an article on the Navigation

of the Ancients, and would confess at the outset our indebtedness to it for much that we have learned from it, and for much more which it taught us where to find.

The history of navigation commences with the launching of the ark on the waters of the deluge; and it is not a little singular that the artistical merits of this extraordinary structure should have been unrecognized for four thousand years or more. To be sure, now and then a mathematician who revered the Bible had said a patronizing word or two about the ark as a thing that might possibly float without capsizing; and Bishop Wilkins, no mean authority, had given his opinion, that it could not have been built more appropriately for its purpose. But it was reserved for Peter Janson, a Dutch merchant of the seventeenth century, to adopt it for a model; nor can Noah have encountered severer missiles from the ridicule of antediluvian wags, than annoyed honest Peter while his ship was in building. But he had faith enough in the Hebrew record to build an ark in the precise proportions of that which had saved the patriarch's family; and it was found on trial most admirably adapted for bulky cargoes, as it had 30 or 40 per cent. more available tonnage than ships of the usual model requiring the same number of mariners.

The chief objection to its use was, that it had not, like its prototype, the monopoly of the sea, and that, on ocean paths infested by buccaneers, it could not be manœuvred rapidly or adroitly enough to evade pursuit. But it is believed that Janson's experiment led to the general adoption for the carriage of bulky freights of what is commonly called "the Dutch build," of which our ships designed for the cotton trade, and often exceeding by 20 per cent. their ratable tonnage, are fair specimens.

Among the most ancient nations, the Egyptians and the Phoenicians took the lead as navigators. The Egyptians built their boats from the root, cut their masts from the stalk, made their sails from the bark, and twisted their cordage from the stoutest fibres, of the papyrus. These vessels were not, and probably could not be, trusted as sea boats; but they served the purpose of an extensive inland trade on the Nile and the numerous canals which it fed. The Phoenicians, on the other hand, masters of a sterile and rugged country, driven to commerce by the paucity of their agricultural gains, and having

equal access to the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, established maritime intercourse with the most remote coasts of the then known world. Of the details of their naval architecture we know nothing; but from the extent and danger of their voyages we may infer that they had attained no inconsiderable amount of skill. Sidon was their chief port, and before the Homeric age, they had undoubtedly reached India as their eastward terminus, while they had planted colonies beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

As to

It was by means of Phoenician navigators that Solomon conducted the traffic, which flooded his capital with the precious metals, and made his reign proverbial throughout the regions of the East for wealth and magnificence. Ophir and Tarshish were the chief emporia of this commerce. the locality of Ophir, there is almost a world-wide difference of opinion. The three years consumed in making the voyage, and the identity of the radical letters of Ophir and Peru, have given rise to the irrational hypothesis that the New World furnished gold for the Hebrew temple. Gesenius supposes Ophir to have been a portion of the sea-coast of Arabia, as that name stands in Genesis among Arabian countries, and may itself be traced, as he thinks, to an Arabian origin. But if this were the case, the gold and silver, as well as the ivory and peacocks, brought thence, must have been imported, not indigenous. Eastern Africa, which has also been supposed by many to have been the terminus of these voyages, could not have furnished the precious stones or the sandal [almug] wood, which made part of the return cargoes. Josephus, who probably was not without traditional authority, speaks unhesitatingly of Ophir as having been the Chersonesus Aurea, now known as the peninsula of Malacca. It is believed that there are none of the commodities named as the products of Solomon's commerce which Malacca might not have furnished from within its own borders, or from nearly adjacent regions. Nor will the voyage appear unreasonably long, when we consider that the ancients coasted where they could, transacted much business from port to port, and had not vessels so rigged as to enable them to cross the Indian Ocean except under favor of the monsoons.

As to Tarshish, the other principal mart of Hebrew traffic, the learned have been still more widely divided, it having