GIBBON. 1737-1794. EDWARD GIBBON, the historian, was born in Surrey, England, in 1737, and died in 1794. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, but remained only a short time. At an early age he became deeply interested in religion, and devoted himself to study, relieving the tedium of his labors by assiduous courtship of Mademoiselle Curchod, whose acquaintance he made in Switzerland. The lady inclined to him; but her father did not, and she finally married M. Necker, and became the mother of Madame de Staël. In 1759 he returned to England and was admitted into the most cultivated society. Two years later he published in French an Essay on the Study of Literature, which attracted but little attention in England. In 1763 he went to France, and became the intimate friend of Helvetius, D'Alembert, Diderot, and other eminent men. The next year he went to Rome, and there conceived the project of writing the history of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1776 the first volume of this great work was published, and at once made him famous. His attacks on Christianity called out many severe rebukes, which enhanced the popular interest in his book. The concluding volumes of the History appeared in 1787. The author's last literary work was his own Autobiography, which has been pronounced the finest specimen of that kind of composition in the English language. The graces of Gibbon's style have always been the subject of wonder and admiration. In his History he is stately and magnificent; in his Autobiography he is easy, spirited, and charming. The style of his History has been censured by some critics for its excessive elaboration, and its opulence of French phrases; but the general verdict of literary authorities of his own and later ages awards him the highest rank among English historians as a master of the language. ARABIA. IN the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the southwest, diffuse a noxious and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions; the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth; the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca,* * MECCA. A city in Arabia and the birthplace of Mahomet, a celebrated religious teacher and pretended prophet, born about 750 A. D. He was the founder of one of the most widely diffused after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of the waters, which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry in the cultivation of the palm-tree and the vine. The high lands that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and water the air is more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil of the husbandman; and peculiar gifts of frankincense and coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the world. : Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood; the Bedoweens † preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are seldom alienated and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed, among the tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop their sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than they dart away with the swiftness of the wind: and if their friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and Arabia the camel is a sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast of burden can perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days; and a reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large religions of the globe. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. I., and Irving's Mahomet and his Successors.) : + BEDOWEENS, BEDOUINS. A tribe of nomadic Arabs who live in tents, and are scattered over the deserts of Arabia, Egypt, and parts of Africa. bag, a fifth stomach of the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the larger breed is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious: the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal; and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents of the Bedoweens. The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity of Ishmael.* Some exceptions, that can neither be dissembled nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies; the armies of Sesostris + and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan,|| could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, their intrepid valor had been severely felt by their neighbors, in offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practice the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity, and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance. In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is forti * ISHMAEL. Son of Abraham and Hagar, and the supposed ancestor of the Arabians. +SESOSTRIS. An Egyptian king and warrior. Bible. CYRUS. The founder of the Persian Empire; one of the great warriors mentioned in the POMPEY. A famous Roman general, born 106 B. c. (See Plutarch's Lives.) TRAJAN. A Roman emperor, born 52 A. D. fied with the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in his outward demeanor: his speech is slow, weighty, and concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and his superiors without awe. ARABIA (continued). THE separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of jurisprudence which they believe and practice to the present hour. They pretend that, in the division of the earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to other branches of the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ishmael might recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived. According to the remark of Pliny,* the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise: the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary traveler, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, "Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment." A ready submission entitles him to mercy resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in legitimate defense. : The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their beards, is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Chaldean tongues: the independence of the tribes was * PLINY. A Roman historian. marked by their peculiar dialects; but each, after their own, allowed a just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present English alphabet, were invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of meter, and of rhetoric were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, and their more elaborate compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the applause of his own and kindred tribes. The Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and if they sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny. The same hospitality, which was practiced by Abraham, and celebrated by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and, perhaps, with gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public applause must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah, the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in the |