act track of his natural thoughts, feelnd suggestions, and were in fact nothse than these thoughts, feelings, and tions issued, so to speak, in a red-hot It is clear that his inspirations must ursued a course and exhibited a deent predetermined by the circums through which he moved. Thus, the three years of probation and priroselytism that succeeded his call, the tions that arose within him and were n down for his own benefit and that of w disciples, were doubtless of a general imple character-confirmations of the Theistic faith he had arrived at; detions of the Polytheism and Sadduof the Meccans; and exhortations to o persevere in his chosen path. During n years, again, of his public apostleship cca, his revelations would be more spend complex; there would be vehement gations of his adversaries; imprecations e most conspicuous of them; indignant s to those that charged him with imre; consolations to his persecuted fols; precepts for their direction in special ions; rules for the new worship; and cal hints relating to difficult cases of ience, referred to the Prophet for deciFinally, during his ten years of triant power and conquest, his revelations I assume a wider and become scope, ore practical and shrewd in their tenor: would then be commands to go forth tle; songs of victory; judicial threats st refractory subjects; intimations of lesigns; and dexterous lessons in theostatecraft. Nor, in all this, would be the slightest suspicion on the part homet himself that the passions and A less defensible specimen still of this inations of the Man were determining trusion of personal desire into the matter of spirations of the Prophet. As it is the Koran is the following, revealed at Medina, nature of the orator to become lucid, and consequently during the height of the d, and practical, in precise proportion Prophet's power. We feel ourselves bound becomes ungovernable and excited; so to quote it, as it is decidedly the least sinMahomet's belief in his absolute inspi-cere-looking bit in the whole Koran, and the most likely to suggest thoughts discreditable to the Prophet: treat these revelations critically as illustrations of their author, and by forcing them to yield up whatever of his actual self is lodged in them, thereby to expose, more or less severely, whatever may have been foul or insincere in the character of the man. Nor is there the slightest doubt that traces of foulness and insincerity would thus be discovered. There can be no doubt, for example, that in the sensuality of the Mahometan descriptions of the future Paradise of believers, (a sensuality on which the Arabian theologians have improved since Mahomet's time, but which is still discoverable in the Koran,) the peculiar personal weakness of the Prophet, as well as his consideration for the Arabic temperament, very clearly betray themselves. The following passage will indicate the highest degree of sensuality present in these descriptions: have gained rather than lost as his became worldly, politic, and specific. e, accordingly, if anywhere, it is t might be possible to show cause for ind solid charges against the character homet. For, though it is definitively d that he is not to be accused of the ture of palming off as revelations what w to be merely a class of the more in "And when the heaven shall be rent in sunder, and shall become red as a rose, and shall melt as ointment, on that day neither man nor genius shall be asked concerning his sin. The wicked shall by their forelocks and the feet, and shall be cast be known by their marks, and they shall be taken into hell. This is hell which the wicked deny as a falsehood: they shall pass to and fro between the same and hot boiling water. But for him who dreadeth the tribunal of his Lord are prepared two gardens, planted with shady trees. In each of them two fountains shall be flowing; in each of them shall there be of every fruit two kinds. They shall repose on couches, the linings whereof shal} be of thick silk, interwoven with gold; and the fruit of the two gardens shall be near at hand to gather. Therein shall receive them beauteous damsels," &c., &c.--Koran, (Sale's Translation,) chap. 55. "O Prophet, We have allowed thee thy wives unto whom thou hast given their dower, and also the slaves which thy right hand possesseth, of the booty which God hath granted thee, and the daughters of thy uncle, and the daughters of thy aunts, both on thy father's side and on thy mother's side, who have fled with thee from Mecce * to ordinary Mahometans.] * *Thou mayest, have come down to us from his contem ries. The Prophet, say these accounts, a very handsome man of middle sta with a broad chest, a powerful neck, hands and feet, a large head, long hair, a thick beard, flashing black eyes, a kind of redness or fire in them, and a plexion more ruddy than was common an the Arabs. At his death there were b few white hairs in his beard, and a fev his head near the top. The extremitie his forehead, (this fact we will tell to phrenologists, if it is not already in t stock,) projected far over the temple (Extremum frontis latus supra tempora minens exporrectum ); i.e., as Mr. Don would say, "Ideality and wonder the houses of the Prophet, unless it be permitted you to eat meat with him, without waiting his convenient time; but when ye are invited, then enter. And when ye shall have eaten disperse yourselves, and stay not to enter into familiar discourse; for this incommodeth the Prophet. He is ashamed to bid you depart; but God is not ashamed of the truth. And when ye ask of the Prophet's wives what ye may have occasion for, ask it of them from behind a curtain. This will be more pure for your hearts, and their hearts. Neither is it fit for you to give any uneasiness to the Apostle of God, or to marry his wives after him forever; for this would be a grievous thing in the sight of God."--Koran, (Sale's Transla-large." His eyebrows were long and t tion,) chap. 33. Evidently, if we are to extend a generous belief in the honesty of Mahomet, even to such a passage as this, we can do so only in virtue of the hypothesis, that in certain states of his mind he regarded even his own meanest and least dignified desires as divinely allowed and accredited. Occasionally, however, he seems to become aware of the possibility of such a substitution of the personal and mean for the revealed and glorious; for not only is he sometimes rebuked in the Koran for what he has just said or done, but not unfrequently one passage of the Koran is sent, as it were, expressly to abrogate another. Of the splendid naïveté, too, with which, in the above passage, he vindicates his own title to peculiar dignity and respect, there are other instances in the Koran. In chap. 68, for example, it is revealed, "O Mahomet, through the grace of God thou art not distracted. Verily, there is prepared for thee an everlasting reward; for thou art of a noble disposition." Even Mahomet's secret thoughts about himself, it would seem, conceived, we may suppose, in his moments of exulting consciousness, were liable, therefore, to be cast out red-hot in the general eruption, like the tell-tale sandal of the missing Empedocles. The very minute descriptions that have been left to us of the personal appearance and habits of Mahomet are of great assistance to us in conceiving his character. The following details are taken from the work of the Arabic historian Abulfeda, (1273-1331,) "De vita et rebus gestis Mohammedis,' (Oxon, 1723 Arabicè et Latinè,) or from the notes appended to that work by its Oxford and between them was conspicuously se ge his hair, looking at himself in the E. When sleeping, says another, he hed gently, and never snored-nunquam os emittens. He was extremely liberal and sundry, especially to the poor; most scrupulously just in his dealings. xed a laugh, and sometimes joked himOnce an old woman came to him, and him to pray to God that she might be ted into paradise. "O mother of such " was his reply, "there will be no old en in paradise at all;" on which she oing away weeping, when it was exed to her that the Prophet's meaning hat in paradise women would not be, nor he old. Still better is the following, y the Prophet's wife Ayesha herself: e, as the Prophet was mending his shoe erspiration broke out on his face, so could not see the peculiar light that Eo radiate from it. "By Allah!' said I, bu Kaber were to see you now, he learn whether that poem of his about more applicable to you than to any ne else.' Then said he,But what is it that Abu Kaber has written about "He says," replied I, "nothing less this. When I beheld the Prophet I I overjoyed; his countenance shines as loud shines glittering with glory.' g this, the Prophet, wiping away the ration, and showing a merrier face than said, 'O Ayesha, God give thee a reward.' As nice an anecdote of its = we know, and one calculated to leave agreeable impression of the Prophet s household ways! His lasting affeco, for his first wife Kadijah, asserted a very emphatic manner even to the his later and younger favorite, the Ayesha, when she teased him on the , is a fact which it is highly pleasant emplate. word, in conclusion, in lieu of that te appreciation of the faith and sysIslam, with which, had space permitwould have been so fitting to follow sketch of the life and character of der. first, regarded historically, and in its to the state of religious anarchy, both in its native soil and in other f the East it was the means of dis, there can be no doubt, we think, real step in advance, a revolution of vast mo ment to all that were affected by it. To the Arabic race, in particular, to whom the publication of the Koran was not only the origin of a new polity, but also the commencement of a new literature, Islamism was an intellectual boon. The Mussulman recognizes this when he names the age prior to Mahomet, the Age of Ignorance. Even among the Arabians themselves, however, there have been sceptics who have formed a different opinion. "There were good heads," says Goethe, "who recognized a better style of writing in the old time than that exhibited in the Koran, and maintained that had not God chanced once for all to reveal His will, and a determinate legal system through Mahomet, the Arabians would have spontaneously climbed by degrees to a similar or even higher position, and developed purer conceptions in a purer language. Others, more audacious have asserted that Mahomet injured their language and literature to an extent that they can never recover." These, however, are but the complaints of the Zoiluses. Considered absolutely, on the other hand, or in comparison with what, as civilized men and partakers of the Christian inheritance, we are able to set in contrast with it, Islamism assumes quite another look and value. In the first place, created, as it was, under the pressure, and within the mould, so to speak, of a narrow physical conception of the universe, it wants that scientific transparency and largeness, without which it could now be a tenement of no cultivated mind, and which, not diminishing in the least its moral intensity, even a natural Theist might have succeeded in giving to it. In the Theism of Plato, Pagan and Polytheistic as it was, we see the earth hung like a dark ball in the midst of an azure universe, through which stars glitter at intervals, and round whose outer bosses the chariots of the gods career. In the Theism of Mahomet, on the other hand, vastly more terrible on the conscience as it is than that of Plato, we seem to stand on a flat unspacious plain, down over which, and so near above us that we can scarcely breathe, there presses an impenetrable iron roof. Further, taking the higher view that still remains, and permitting ourselves for a moment the final contrast, where, in Islamism aught of that transcendent reciprocation of offer on the one hand, and aspiration of free grace and human acceptance on the other, by which heaven and earth are brought nigh, and an invisible descending cone, as it were, is interposed, the basis of which is the whole face of the supernatural, and the apex of which is in the heart of man; aught, either, of that spirit of meekness and love which Christianity diffuses through life like a balm, and discharges on the world like a plenteous dew? Of the poverty of Islamism in all these respects, the present state of the Mahometan parts of the world is but too sad a EYE-MEMORY. BY CALDER CAMPBELL. WHEN the present all around me Fancy sheds o'er all the sunshine That is bred of pleasant thoughts; One brief glimpse at things familiar Oh it is a mystic wonder This same memory of the eye, But with force that keeps time under One small flower, whose shape and color Even upon yon wall the shadow, On the thick green boughs could find Often, as we linger idly O'er new paths, we come upon Something-field, or hill, or streamlet, Windmill, glittering in the sunThat we knew by frequent visits Long ago, ere-youth was gone. Yet these scenes are strangers to us, Though their forms are old and dear; And Eye Memory, through and through us, Runneth like some liquid clear That is poured from jeweled chalice By a spirit hovering near. It were well if recollections Of the past were always drawn From the eyes, whose retrospections Have no tempest in their dawn: Happy he whose calm reflections Pass not the paternal lawn! Happier still if our Eye-Memory, After traveling far, bring home Sweet experiences---telling From Bentley's Miscellany. EDITED LETTERS OF CELEBRATED PERSONS. MRS. PIOZZI. following letters of Mrs. Piozzi, like f Horace Walpole's, which we recently ed, are from Mr. Lyson's collection possession. They will be followed in numbers by many more from the and. he date of the earliest of these letters, Piozzi was forty-three or forty-four ld, and upward of twenty years had since she had made Dr. Johnson's tance. At this very time, Septem84, Dr. Johnson was lying ill in his s in Bolt Court, and six days after the the third letter in the following Dehe was dead. The rupture with 1 taken place long before. me D'Arblay visited Dr. Johnson late mber, and amongst other things they of Mrs. Piozzi, or Mrs. Thrale, as always called her from the feeling ion with which he regarded her secband. "We talked," says Madame y, "of poor Mrs. Thrale [poor Mrs. because, after devoting her youth to who was much older than herself, she herself in due season of her liberty lt her own feelings in another marut only for a moment; for I saw him ly moved, and with such severity of ure, that I hastened to start another and he solemnly enjoined me to that no more." Johnson was inexn that subject. He never forgave riage. He would have had Mrs. eep up her houses at Streatham and on for his use, while he made her life, e least of it, very uncomfortable by lectures upon her imprudence, his habits, and domestic tyranny-for it amounted to that. In the very canunt which she has left of the causes quarrel or separation, she says that extremely impracticable as an in | ion, and useful as a friend. When there was nobody to restrain his dislikes, it was extremely difficult to find anybody with whom he could converse, without being always on the verge of a quarrel, or something too like a quarrel to be pleasing." So long as Mr. Thrale lived, for a period of sixteen or seventeen years, she bore her perpetual confinement, which she tells us was terrifying in the first years of their friendship, and irksome in the last, without a murmur. To the shelter which she and Mr. Thrale gave him in their house, and to her constant kindness and nursing, the world owes much; but when Mr. Thrale, who supported her through these trials, was gone, she found the weight insupportable. She had not a moment of time at her own disposal. Dr. Johnson absorbed it all, and not in the most agreeable manner. "To have a little portion of time at my own use," she says, "was a thing impossible, as my hours, carriage, and servants, had long been at his command, who would not rise in the morning till twelve o'clock, perhaps, and oblige me to make breakfast for him till the bell rang for dinner, though much displeased if the toilet was neglected, and though much of the time we passed together was spent in blaming or deriding, very justly, my neglect of economy, and waste of that money which might make many families happy.' The consequence was that she broke up her establishment, left London, and married Piozzi, an Italian singer. In these letters we find her corresponding with Mr. Lysons, while she is traveling abroad with her husband, and while her old inmate, whom she loved and reverenced to the end, notwithstanding all their vexatious little feuds, is dying in Bolt Court. When Dr. Johnson heard of her marriage with Piozzi, he exclaimed, "Varium et mutabile semper foemina!" That there was a |