This, then, is the century during which Mohammedanism and Christianity were marshalling their forces—unknown, indeed, to each other, but preparing, according to their respective powers, for the period when they were to be brought face to face. We shall go eastward, and follow the triumphant march of the warriors of the Crescent from Arabia to the shores of Africa; but first we shall cast a desponding eye on the condition and prospects of the kingdoms of the West. Conquest, spoliation, and insecurity had done their work. Wave after wave had passed over the surface of the old Roman State, and obliterated almost all the landmarks of the ancient time. The towns, to be sure, still remained, but stripped of their old magnificence, and thinly peopled by the dispossessed inhabitants of the soil, who congregated together for mutual support. Trade was carried on, but subject to the exactions, and sometimes the open robberies, of the avaricious chieftains who had reared their fortresses on the neighbouring heights. Large tracts of country lay waste and desolate, or were left to the happy fertility of nature in the growth of spontaneous woods. Marshes were formed over whole districts, and the cattle picked up an uncertain existence by browsing over great expanses of poor and unenclosed land. These flocks and herds were guarded by hordes of armed serfs, who camped beside them on the fields, and led a life not unlike that of their remote ancestors on the steppes of Tartary. A man’s wealth was counted by his retainers, and there was no supreme authority to keep the dignitaries, even of the same tribe, from warring on each other and wasting their rival’s country with fire and sword. Agriculture, therefore, was in the lowest state, and famines, plagues, and other concomitants of want were common in all parts of Europe. One beautiful exception must be made to this universal neglect of agriculture, in favour of the Benedictine monks, established in various parts of Italy and Gaul in the course of the preceding century. Religious reverence was a surer safeguard to those lowly men than castles or armour could have been. No marauder dared to trespass on lands which were under the protection of priest and bishop. And these Western recluses, far from imitating the slothful uselessness of the Eastern monks, turned their whole attention to the cultivation of the soil. In this they bestowed a double benefit on their fellow-men, for, in addition to the positive improvement of the land, they rescued labour from the opprobrium into which it had fallen, and raised it to the dignity of a religious duty. Slavery, we have seen, was universally practised in all the conquered territories, and as only the slaves were compelled to the drudgeries of the field, the work itself borrowed a large portion of the degradation of the unhappy beings condemned to it; and robbery, pillage, murder, and every crime, were considered far less derogatory to the dignity of free Frank or Burgundian than the slightest touch of the mattock or spade. How surprised, then, were the haughty countrymen and descendants of Clovis or Alboin to see the revered hands from which they believed the highest blessings of Heaven to flow, employed in the daily labour of digging, planting, sowing, reaping, thrashing, grinding, and baking! At first they looked incredulously on. Even the monks were disposed to consider it no part of their conventual duties. But the founder of their institution wrote to them, “to beware of idleness, as the greatest enemy of the soul,” and not to be uneasy if at any time the cares of the harvest hindered them from their formal readings and regulated prayers. “No person is ever more usefully employed than when working with his hands or following the plough, providing food for the use of man.” And the effects of these exhortations were rapidly seen. Wherever a monastery was placed, there were soon fertile fields all round it, and innumerable stacks of corn. Generally chosen with a view to agricultural pursuits, we find sites of abbeys at the present day which are the perfect ideal of a working farm; for long after the outburst of agricultural energy had expired among the monks of St. Benedict, the choice of situation and knowledge of different soils descended to the other ecclesiastical establishments, and skill in agriculture continued at all times a characteristic of the religious orders. What could be more enchanting than the position of their monastic homes? Placed on the bank of some beautiful river, surrounded on all sides by the low flat lands enriched by the neighbouring waters, and protected by swelling hills where cattle are easily fed, we are too much in the habit of attributing the selection of so admirable a situation to the selfishness of the portly abbot. When the traveller has admired the graces of Melrose or of Tintern—the description applies equally to almost all the foundations of an early date—and has paid due attention to the chasteness of the architecture, and beauty of “the long-resounding aisle and fretted vault,” he sometimes contemplates with a sneer the matchless charm of the scenery, and exceeding richness of the haugh or strath in which the building stands. “Ah,” he says, “they were knowing old gentlemen, those monks and priors. They had fish in the river, fat beeves upon the meadow, red-deer on the hill, ripe corn on the water-side, a full grange at Christmas, and snowy sheep at midsummer.” And so they had, and deserved them all. The head of that great establishment was not wallowing in the fat of the land to the exclusion of envious baron or starving churl. He was, in fact, setting them an example which it would have been wise in them to follow. He merely chose the situation most fitted for his purpose, and bestowed his care on the lands which most readily yielded him his reward. It was not necessary for the monks in those days to seek out some neglected corner, and to restore it to cultivation, as an exercise of their ingenuity and strength. They were free to choose from one end of Europe to the other, for the whole of it lay useless and comparatively barren. But when these able-bodied recluses, if such they may be called, had shown the results of patient industry and skill, the peasants, who had seen their labours, or occasionally been employed to assist them, were able to convey to their lay proprietors or masters the lessons they had received. And at last something venerable was thought to reside in the act of farming itself. It was so uniformly found an accompaniment of the priestly character, that it acquired a portion of its sanctity, and the rude Lombard or half-civilized Frank looked with a kind of awe upon waving corn and rich clover, as if they were the result of a higher intelligence and purer life than he possessed. Even the highest officers in the Church were expected to attend to these agricultural conquests. In this century we find, that when kings summoned bishops to a council, or an archbishop called his brethren to a conference, care was taken to fix the time of meeting at a season which did not interfere with the labours of the farm. Privileges naturally followed these beneficial labours. The kings, in their wondering gratitude, surrounded the monasteries with fresh defences against the envy or enmity of the neighbouring chiefs. Their lands became places of sanctuary, as the altar of the Church had been. Freedmen—that is, persons manumitted from slavery, but not yet endowed with property—were everywhere put under the protection of the clergy. Immunities were heaped upon them, and methods found out of making them a separate and superior race. At the Council of Paris, in 613, it was decreed that the priest who offended against the common law should be tried by a mixed court of priests and laymen. But soon this law, apparently so just, was not considered enough, and the trial of ecclesiastics was given over to the ecclesiastical tribunals, without the admixture of the civil element. Other advantages followed from time to time. The Church was found in all the kingdoms to be so useful as the introducer of agriculture, and the preserver of what learning had survived the Roman overthrow, that the ambitious hierarchy profited by the royal and popular favour. They were the most influential, or perhaps it would be more just to say they were the only, order in the State. There was a nobility, but it was jarring and disunited; there were citizens, but they were powerless and depressed; there was a king, but he was but the first of the peers, and stood in dignified isolation where he was not subordinate to a combination of the others. The clergy, therefore, had no enemy or rival to dread, for they had all the constituents of power which the other portions of the population wanted. Their property was more secure; their lands were better cultivated; they were exempt from many of the dangers and burdens to which the lay barons were exposed; they were not liable to the risks and losses of private war; they had more intelligence than their neighbours, and could summon assistance, either in advice, or support, or money, from the farthest extremity of Europe. Nothing, indeed, added more, at the commencement of this century, to the authority of those great ecclesiastical chieftains, than the circumstance that their interests were supported, not only by their neighbouring brethren, but by mitred abbot and lordly bishop in distant lands. If a prior or his monks found themselves ill used on the banks of the Seine, their cause was taken up by all other monks and priors wherever they were placed. And the rapidity of their intercommunication was extraordinary. Each monastery seems to have had a number of active young brethren who traversed the wildest regions with letters or messages, and brought back replies, almost with the speed and regularity of an established post. A convent on Lebanon was informed in a very short time of what had happened in Provence—the letter from the Western abbot was read and deliberated on, and an answer intrusted to the messenger, who again travelled over the immense tract lying between, receiving hospitality at the different religious establishments that occurred upon his way, and everywhere treated with the kindness of a brother. Monasteries in this way became the centres of news as well as of learning, and for many hundred years the only people who knew any thing of the state of feeling in foreign nations, or had a glimpse of the mutual interests of distant kingdoms, were the cowled and gowned individuals who were supposed to have given up the world and to be totally immersed in penances and prayers. What could Hereweg of the strong hand do against a bishop or abbot, who could tell at any hour what were the political designs of conquerors or kings in countries which the astonished warrior did not know even by name; who retained by traditionary transmission the politeness of manner and elegance of accomplishment which had characterized the best period of the Roman power, when Christianized noblemen, on being promoted to an episcopal see, had retained the delicacies of their former life, and wrote love-songs as graceful as those of Catullus, and epigrams neither so witty nor so coarse as those of Martial? Intelligence asserted its superiority over brute force, and in this century the supremacy of the Church received its accomplishment in spite of the depravation of its principles. It gained in power and sank in morals. A hundred years of its beneficial action had made it so popular and so powerful that it fell into temptations, from which poverty or unpopularity would have kept it free. The sixth century was the period of its silent services, its lower officers endearing themselves by useful labour, and its dignitaries distinguishing themselves by learning and zeal. In the seventh century the fruit of all those virtues was to be gathered by very different hands. Ambitious contests began between the different orders composing the gradually rising hierarchy, from the monk in his cell to the Bishop of Rome or Constantinople on their pontifical thrones. It is very sad, after the view we have taken of the early benefits bestowed on many nations by the labours and example of the priests and monks, to see in the period we have reached the total cessation of life and energy in the Church;—of life and energy, we ought to say, in the fulfilment of its duties; for there was no want of those qualities in the gratification of its ambition. Forgetful of what Gregory had pronounced the chief sign of Antichrist, when he opposed the pretension of his rival metropolitan to call himself Universal Bishop, the Bishops of Rome were deterred by no considerations of humility or religion from establishing their temporal power. Up to this time they had humbly received the ratification of their election from the Emperors of the East, whose subjects they still remained. But the seat of their empire was far off, their power was a tradition of the past, and great thoughts came into the hearts of the spiritual chiefs, of inroads on the territory of the temporal rulers. In this design they looked round for supporters and allies, and with a still more watchful eye on the quarters from which opposition was to be feared. The bishops as a body had fallen not only into contempt but hatred. One century had sufficed to extinguish the elegant scholarship I have mentioned, at one time characteristic of the Christian prelates. Ignorance had become the badge of all the governors of the Church—ignorance and debauchery, and a tyrannical oppression of their inferiors. The wise old man in Rome saw what advantage he might derive from this, and took the monks under his peculiar protection, relieved them from the supervision of the local bishop, and made them immediately dependent on himself. By this one stroke he gained the unflinching support of the most influential body in Europe. Wherever they went they held forth the Pope as the first of earthly powers, and began already, in the enthusiasm of their gratitude, to speak of him as something more than mortal. To this the illiterate preachers and prelates had nothing to reply. They were sunk either in the grossest darkness, or involved in the wildest schemes of ambition, bishoprics being even held by laymen, and by both priest and laymen used as instruments of advancement and wealth. From these the Pontiff on the Tiber, whose weaknesses and vices were unknown, and who was held up for invidious contrast with the bishops of their acquaintance by the libellous and grateful monks, had nothing to fear. He looked to another quarter in the political sky, and perceived with satisfaction that the kingly office also had fallen into contempt. Having lost the first impulse which carried it triumphantly over the dismembered Roman world, and made it a tower of strength in the hands of warriors like Theodoric the Goth and Clovis the Frank, it had forfeited its influence altogether in the pitiful keeping of the bloodthirsty or do-nothing kings who had submitted to the tutelage of the Mayors of the Palace.

One of the great supports of the royal influence was the fiction of the law by which all lands were supposed to hold of the Crown. As in ancient days, in the German or Scythian deserts, the ambitious chieftain had presented his favourite with spear or war-horse in token of approval, so in the early days of the conquest of Gaul, the leader had presented his followers with tracts of land. The war-horse, under the old arrangement, died, and the spear became rotten; but the land was subject neither to death nor decay. What, then, was to become of the warrior’s holding when he died? On this question, apparently so personal to the barbaric chiefs of the time of Dagobert of Gaul, depended the whole course of European history. The kings claimed the power of re-entering on the lands in case of the demise of the proprietor, or even in case of his rebellion or disobedience. The Leud, as he was called—or feudatory, as he would have been named at a later time—disputed this, and contended for the perpetuity and inalienability of the gift. It is easy to perceive who were the winners in this momentous struggle. From the success of the leuds arose the feudal system, with limited monarchies and national nobilities. The success of the kings would have resulted in despotic thrones and enslaved populations. Foremost in the struggle for the royal supremacy had been the famous and unprincipled Brunehild, a woman more resembling the unnatural creation of a romance than a real character. She had succeeded at one time in subordinating the leuds, by exterminating the recusants with remorseless cruelty; and her triumph might have been final and irrevocable if she had not had the bad luck or impolitic hardihood to offend the Church. The Abbot Columba, a holy man from the far-distant island of Iona in the Hebrides of Scotland, had ventured to upbraid her with her crimes. She banished him from the Abbey of Luxeuil with circumstances of peculiar harshness, and there was no hope for her more. The leuds she might have overcome singly, for they were disunited and scattered; but now there was not a monastery in Europe which did not side with her foes. Clotaire, her grandson, marched against her at the instigation of priests and leuds combined. She was conquered and taken. She was tortured for three days with all the ingenuity of hatred, and on the fourth was tied to the tails of four wild horses and torn to pieces, though the mother, sister, daughter, of kings, and now more than eighty years of age. And this brings us to the institution and use of the strange officers we have already named Mayors of the Palace.

To aid them in their efforts against the royal assumptions, the leuds long ago had elected one of themselves to be domestic adviser of the king, and also to command the armies in war. This soon became the recognised right of the Mayor of the Palace; and as in that state of society the wars were nearly perpetual, and bearers of arms the only wielders of power, the person invested with the command was in reality the supreme authority in the State. When the king happened to be feeble either in body or mind, the mayor supplied his place, without even the appearance of inferiority; and when Dagobert, the last active member of the Merovingian family, died in 638, his successors were merely the nominal holders of the Crown. A new race rose into importance, and it will not be very long before we meet the hereditary Mayors of the Palace as hereditary Kings of the Franks. Here, then, was the whole of Europe heaving with some inevitable change. It will be interesting to look at the position of its different parts before they settled into their new relations. The constitutions of the various kingdoms were very nearly alike at this time. There were popular assemblies in every nation. In France they were called the “Fields of May” or of “March,” in England the “Wittenagemot,” in Spain the “Council of Toledo.” These meetings consisted of the freemen and landholders and bishops. But it was soon found inconvenient for the freemen and smaller proprietors to attend, in consequence of the length of the journey and the miserable condition of the roads; and the nobles and bishops were the sole persons who represented the State. The nobles held a parallel rank to each other in all countries, though called by different names. In France, a person in possession of any office connected with the court, or of lands presented by the Crown, was called a leud or entrustion, a count or companion, or vassal. In England he was called a royal thane. The lower order of freemen were called herimans, or inferior thanes; in Latin liberi, or more simply, boni homines, good men. Below these were the Romans, or old inhabitants of the country; below these, the serfs or bondmen attached to the soil; and far down, below them all, out of all hope or consideration, the slaves, who were the mere chattels of their lords. This, then, was the constitution of European society when the Arabian conquests began—at the head of the nation the King, at the head of the people the Church; the nobles followed according to their birth or power; the freemen, whether citizens engaged in the first infant struggles of trade, or occupying a farm, came next; and the wretched catalogue was ended by the despoiled serf, from whom every thing, even his property in himself, had been taken away. There were laws for the protection or restraint of each of these orders, and we may gather an idea of the ranks they held in public estimation by the following table of the price of blood:—

Distinctions of dress pointed out still more clearly the difference of rank and station. The principal variety, however, was the method of wearing the hair. The chieftain among the Franks considered the length and profusion of his locks as the mark of his superiority. His broad flowing tresses were divided up the middle of his head, and floated over his shoulders. They were curled and oiled—not with common butter, like some other nations, says an author quoted by Chateaubriand; not twisted in little plaits, like those of the Goths, but carefully combed out to their full luxuriance. The common soldier, on the other hand, wore his hair long in front, but trimmed close behind. They swore by their hair as the most sacred of their oaths, and offered a tress to the Church on returning from a successful war. From this peculiar consideration given to the hair arose the custom, still prevalent, of shaving the heads of ecclesiastics. They were the serfs of God, and sacrificed their locks in token that they were no longer free. When a chief was dishonoured, when a king was degraded, when a rival was to be rendered incapable of opposition, he was not, as in barbarous countries, put to death: he was merely made bald. No amount of popularity, no degree of right, could rouse the people in support of a person whose head was bare. When his hair grew again, he might again become formidable; but the scissors were always at hand. A tyrannical king clipped his enemies’ hair, instead of taking off their heads. They were condemned to the barber instead of the executioner, and sometimes thought the punishment more severe. The sons of Clothilde sent an emissary to her, bearing in his hand a sword and a pair of scissors. “O queen,” he said, “your sons, our masters, wish to know whether you will have your grandchildren slain or clipped.” The queen paused for a moment, and then said, “If my grandchildren are doomed not to mount the throne, I would rather have them dead than hairless.”

Distinguished thus from the lower orders, the nobility soon found that their interests differed from those of the Church. The Church placed itself at the head of the democracy in opposition to the overweening pretensions of the chiefs. It opened its ranks to the conquered races, and invested even the converted serf with dignities which placed him above the level of Thane or Count. The head of the Western Church, now by general consent recognised in the Bishop of Rome, was not slow to see the advantage of his position as leader of a combination in favour of the million. The doctrine of the equality of all men in the sight of Heaven was easily commuted into a demand of universal submission to the Holy See; and so wide was the range given to this claim to obedience that it embraced the proudest of the nobles and haughtiest of kings. It was a satisfaction to the slave in his dungeon to hear that the great man in his castle had been forced to do homage to the Church. There was one earthly power to which the oppressed could look up with the certainty of support. It was this intimate persuasion in the minds of the people which gave such undying vigour to the counsels and pretensions of the ecclesiastical power. It was a power sprung from the people, and exercised for the benefit of the people. The Popes themselves were generally selected from the lowest rank. But what did it matter to the man who led the masses of the trampled nations, and stood as a shield between them and their tyrants, whether he claimed relationship with emperors or slaves? What did it matter, on the other hand, to those hoping and trusting multitudes, whether the object of their confidence was personally a miracle of goodness and virtue,or a monster of sin and cruelty? It was his office to trample on the necks of kings and nobles, and bid the captive go free. While he continued true to the people, the people were true to him. Monarchs who governed mighty nations, and dukes who ruled in provinces the size of kingdoms, looked on with surprise at the growth of a power supported apparently by no worldly arms, but which penetrated to them through their courts and armies. There was no great mind to guide the opposition to its claims. The bishops were sunk in ignorance and sloth, and had lost the respect of their countrymen. The populations everywhere were divided. The succession to the throne was uncertain. The Franks, the leading nation, were never for any length of time under one head. Neustria, or the Western State, comprising all the land between the Meuse, the Loire, and the Mediterranean, Austrasia, or the Eastern State, comprising the land between the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle, and Burgundy, extending from the Loire to the Alps, were at one time united under a common head, and at another held by hostile kings. The Visigoths were obscurely quarrelling about points of divinity within their barrier of the Pyrenees. England was the battle-field of half a dozen little chieftains who called themselves kings; Germany was only civilized on its western border. Italy was cut up into many States, Lombards looking with suspicion on the Exarchate, which was still nominally attached to the Eastern Empire, and Greeks established in the South, sighing for the restoration of their power. Over all this chaos of contending powers appeared the mitre and crozier of the Pope; always at the head of the disaffected people, supported by the monks, who felt the tyranny of the bishops as keenly as the commonalty felt the injustice of their lords; always threatening vengeance on overweening baron or refractory monarch—enhancing his influence with the glory of new miracles wrought in his support, and witnessed unblushingly by preaching friars, who were the missionaries of papal power; concentrating all authority in his hands, and gradually laying the foundation for a trampling and domination over mind and body such as the world had never seen. From this almost universal prostration before the claims of Rome, it is curious to see that the native Irish were totally free. With contemptuous independence, they for a long time rejected the arrogant assumptions of the successor of St. Peter, and were firm in their maintenance of the equality of all the Sees. It was from the newly-converted Anglo-Saxons that the chief recruits in the campaign against the liberties of the national churches were collected. Almost all the names of missionaries on behalf of the Roman pontiff in this century have the home-sound in our ears of “Wigbert,” “Willibald,” “Wernefried,” or “Adalbert.” But there are no Gaelic patronymics from the Churches of Ireland or Wales. They were sisters, they haughtily said, not daughters of the Roman See, as the Anglo-Saxon Church had been; and dwelt with pride on the antiquity of their conversion before the pretensions of the Roman Bishops had been heard of; and thus was added one more to the elements of dissension which wasted the strength of Europe at the very time when unanimity was most required.

But towards the end of this period the rumours of a new power in the East drew men’s attention to the defenceless state in which their internal disagreements had left them. The monasteries were filled with exaggerated reports of the progress of this vast invasion, which not only threatened the national existences of Europe, but the Christian faith. It was a hostile creed and a destroying enemy. What had the Huns been, compared with this new swarm—not of savage warriors turned aside with a bribe or won by a prayer, but enthusiasts in what they considered a holy cause, flushed with victory, armed and disciplined in a style superior to any thing the West could show? We should try to enter into the feelings of that distant time, when day by day myriads of strange and hitherto unconquerable enemies were reported to be on their march.

In the year 621 of the Christian era, Mohammed made his triumphant entry into Medina, a great city of Arabia, having been expelled from Mecca by the enmity of the Jews and the tribe of Koreish. This entry is called the Hegira or Flight, and forms the commencement of the Moslem chronology. All their records are dated from this event. The persons who accompanied him were few in number—his father-in-law, some of his wives, and some of his warriors; but the procession was increased by the numerous believers in his prophetship who resided in the town. At this place began the public worship inculcated by the leader. The worshippers were summoned by a voice sounding from the highest pinnacle of the mosque or church, and pronouncing the words which to this hour are heard from every minaret in the East:—“God is great! God is great! There is no God but God. Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to prayers, come to prayers!” and when the invitation is given at early dawn, the declaration is added, “Prayer is better than sleep! prayer is better than sleep.” These exhortations were not without their intended effect. Prayer was uttered by many lips, and sleep was banished from many eyes; but the prayers were never thought so effectual as when accompanied by sword and lance. Courage and devotedness were now the great supports of the faith. Ali, the husband of Fatima the favourite daughter of the chief, fought and prayed with the same irresistible force. He conquered the unbelieving Jews and Koreishites, cleaving armed men from the crown to the chin with one blow, and wielding a city gate which eight men could not lift, as a shield. Abou Beker, whose daughter was one of the wives of Mohammed, was little inferior to Ali; and Mohammed himself saw visions which comforted and inspired his followers in the midst of battle, and shouted, “On, on! Fight and fear not! The gates of Paradise are under the shade of swords. He will assuredly find instant admission who falls fighting for the faith!” It was impossible to play the hypocrite in a religion where such strength of arm and sharpness of blade were required. Prayers might indeed be mechanical, or said for show, but the fighting was a real thing, and, as such, prevailed over all the shams which were opposed to it. Looking forth already beyond the narrow precincts of his power, Mohammed saw in the distance, across the desert, the proud empires of Persia and Constantinople. To both he wrote letters demanding their allegiance as God’s Prophet, and threatening vengeance if they disobeyed. Chosroes, the Persian, tore the letter to pieces. “Even so,” said Mohammed, “shall his kingdom be torn.” Heraclius the Greek was more respectful. He placed the missive on his pillow, and very naturally fell asleep, and thought of it no more. But his descendants were not long of having their pillows quite so provocative of repose. The city of Medina grew too small to hold the Prophet’s followers, and they went forth conquering and to conquer. There were Abou Beker the wise, and Omar the faithful, and Khaled the brave, and Ali the sword of God. Mecca fell before them, and city after city sent in its adhesion to the claims of a Prophet who had such dreadful interpreters as these. The religion he preached was comparatively true. He destroyed the idols of the land, inculcated soberness, chastity, charity, and, by some faint transmission of the precepts of the Bible, inculcated brotherly love and forgiveness of wrong. But the sword was the true gospel. Its light was spread in Syria and all the adjoining territories. People in apparently sheltered positions could never be sure for an hour that the missionaries of the new faith would not be climbing over their walls with shouts of conquest, and giving them the option of conversion or death. Power spread in gradually-widening circles, but at the centre sad things were going on. Mohammed was getting old. He lost his only son. He laid him in the grave with tears and sighs, and made his farewell pilgrimage to Mecca. Had he no relentings at the visible approach of the end? Was he to go to the grave untouched by all the calamities he had brought upon mankind? the blood he had shed, the multitudes he had beguiled? He had no touch of remorse for any of these things; rather he continued firmer in his course than ever—seemed more persuaded of the genuineness of his mission, and uttered prophecies of the universal extension of his faith. “When the angels ask thee who thou art,” he said, as the body of his son was lowered into the tomb, “say, God is my Lord, the Prophet of God was my father, and my faith was Islam!” Islam continued his own faith till the last. He tottered to the mosque where Abou Beker was engaged in leading the prayers of the congregation, and addressed the people for the last time. “Every thing happens,” he said, “according to the will of God, and has its appointed time, which is not to be hastened or avoided. My last command to you is that you remain united; that you love, honour, and uphold each other; that you exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and to the performance of pious deeds: by these alone men prosper; all else leads to destruction.” A few days after this there was grief and lamentation all over the faithful lands. He died on his sixty-third birthday, in the eleventh year of the Hegira, which answers to our year 632.

Great contentions arose among the chief disciples for the succession to the leadership of the faithful. Abou Beker was father-in-law of the Prophet, and his daughter supported his cause. Omar was also father-in-law of the Prophet, and his daughter supported his cause. Othman had married two of the daughters of the Prophet, but both were dead, and they had left no living child. Ali, the hero of the conquest, was cousin-german of the Prophet, and husband of his only surviving daughter. Already the practices of a court were perceptible in the Emir’s tent. The courtiers caballed and quarrelled; but Ayesha, the daughter of Abou Beker, had been Mohammed’s favourite wife, and her influence was the most effectual. How this influence was exercised amid the Oriental habits of the time, and the seclusion to which the women were subjected, it is difficult to decide; but, after a struggle between her and Hafya, the daughter of Omar, the widowed Othman was found to have no chance; and only Ali remained, still young and ardent, and fittest, to all ordinary judgments, to be the leader of the armies of Allah. While consulting with some friends in the tent of Fatima, his rivals came to an agreement. In a distant part of the town a meeting had been called, and the claims of the different pretenders debated. Suddenly Omar walked across to where Abou Beker stood, bent lowly before him, and kissed his hand in token of submission, saying, “Thou art the oldest companion and most secret friend of the Prophet, and art therefore worthy to rule us in his place.” The example was contagious, and Abou Beker was installed as commander and chief of the believers. A resolution was come to at the same time, that any attempt at seizing the supremacy against the popular will should be punished with death. Ali was constrained to yield, but lived in haughty submission till Fatima died. He then rose up in his place, and taking his two sons with him, Hassan and Hossein, retired into the inner district of Arabia, carrying thus from the camp of the usurping caliph the only blood of the Prophetchief which flowed in human veins. Yet the spirit of the Prophet animated the whole mass. Energy equal to Ali’s was exhibited in Khaled. Omar was earnest in the collection of all the separated portions of the Koran. Othman was burning to spread the new empire over the whole earth; and in this combination of courage, ambition, and fanaticism all Arabia found its interest to join, and ere a year had elapsed from the death of the Prophet, the whole of that peninsula, and all the swart warriors who travelled its sandy steppes, had accepted the great watchword of his religion—“There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.” Ere another year had elapsed the desert had sent forth its swarms. The plains of Asia were overflowed. The battle-cry of Zeyd, the general of the army, was heard in the great commercial cities of the East, and in the lands where the gospel of peace had first been uttered, Emasa and Damascus, and on the banks of Jordan. It was natural that the first effort of the false should be directed against the true. But not indiscriminate was the wrath of Abou Beker against the professors of Christianity. The claims of that dispensation were ever treated with respect, but the depraved priesthood were held up to contempt. “Destroy not fruit-tree nor fertile field on your path,” these were the instructions of the Caliph to the leaders of the host. “Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents, and spare their edifices. But should you meet with a class of unbelievers of a different kind, who go about with shaven crowns, and belong to the synagogue of Satan, be sure you cleave their skulls, unless they embrace the true faith or render tribute.”

Gentle and merciful, therefore, to the peaceful inhabitants, respectful to the gloomy anchorite and industrious monk, but breathing death and disgrace against the proud bishop and ambitious presbyter, the mighty horde moved on. Syria fell; the Persian monarchy was menaced, and its western provinces seized; a Christian kingdom called Hira, situated on the confines of Babylonia, was made tributary to Medina; and Khaled stood triumphant on the banks of the Euphrates, and sent a message to the Great King, commanding him either to receive the faith, or atone for his incredulity with half his wealth. The despot’s ears were unaccustomed to such words, and the fiery deluge went on. At the end of the third year, Abou Beker died, and Omar was the successor appointed by his will. This was already a departure from the law of popular election, but Islam was busy with its conquests far from its central home, and accepted the nomination. Khaled’s course continued westward and eastward, forcing his resistless wedge between the exhausted but still majestic empires of the Greeks and Persians. Blow after blow resounded as the great march went on. Constantinople, and Madayn upon the Tigris, the capitals of Christianity and Mithrism, were equally alarmed and equally powerless. Omar, the Caliph—the word means the Successor of the Apostle—determined to join the army which was encamped against the walls of Jerusalem, and added fresh vigour to the assailants by the knowledge that they fought under his eye.

Heraclius, the degenerate inheritor of the throne of Constantine, and Yezdegird, the successor of Darius and Xerxes, if they had moved towards the seat of war would have been surrounded by all the pomp of their exalted stations. Battalions of guards would have encompassed their persons, and countless officers of their courts attended their progress.

Omar, who saw already the world at his feet, journeyed by slow stages on a wretched camel, carrying his provisions hanging from his saddle-bow, and slept at night under the shelter of some tree, or on the margin of some well. He had but one suit, and that of worsted material, and yet his word was law to all those breathless listeners, and wherever he placed his foot from that moment became holy ground. Jerusalem and Aleppo yielded; Antioch, the chief seat of Grecian government, fell into his hands; Tyre and Tripoli submitted to his power; and the Saracenic hosts only paused when they reached the border of the sea, which they knew washed the fairest shores of Africa and Europe. It did not much matter who was in nominal command. Khaled died; Amru took his place; and yet the tide went on. The great city of Alexandria, which disputed with Constantinople the title of Capital of the World, with its almost fabulous wealth, its four thousand palaces, and five thousand baths, and four hundred theatres, was twice taken, and brought on the submission and conversion of the whole of Egypt. Amru in his hours of leisure was devoted to the cultivation of taste and genius. In John the Grammarian, a Christian student, he found a congenial spirit. Poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric were treated of in the conversations of the Arabic conqueror and the monkish scholar. At last, in reliance on his literary taste, the priest confided to the Moslem that in a certain building in the town there was a library so vast that it had no equal on earth either for number or value of the manuscripts it contained. This was too important a treasure to be dealt with without the express sanction of the Caliph. So the Christian legend is, that Omar replied to the announcement of his general, “Either what those books contain is in the Koran, or it is not. If it is, these volumes are useless; if it is not, they are wicked. Burn them.” The skins and parchments heated the baths of Alexandria for many months, irrecoverable monuments of the past, and an everlasting disgrace to the Saracen name. Yet the story has been doubted; at least, the extent of the destruction. Rather, it has been supposed, the ignorant fanaticism of the illiterate monks, in covering with the legends of saints the obliterated lines of the classic authors, has been more destructive to the literary treasures of those ancient times than the furious zeal of Amru or the bigotry of Omar.

If this great overflow from the desert of Arabia had consisted of nothing but armed warriors or destructive fanatics, its course would have been as transient as it was terrible. The Gothic invaders who had desolated Europe fortunately possessed the flexibility and adaptiveness of mind which fitted them for the reception of the purer faith and more refined manners of the vanquished races. They mixed with the people who submitted to their power, and in a short time adopted their habits and religion. Whatever faith they professed in their original seats, seems to have worn out in the long course of their immigration. The powers they had worshipped in their native wilds were local, and dependent on clime and soil. An easy opening, therefore, was left for Christianity into hearts where no hostile deity guarded the portal of approach. But with the Saracens the case was reversed. Incapable of assimilation with any rival belief—jealously exclusive of the commonest intercourse with the nations they subdued—unbending, contemptuous to others, and carried on by burning enthusiasm in their own cause, and confidence in the Prophet they served, there was no possibility of softening or elevating them from without. The pomps of religious worship, which so awed the wondering tribes of Franks and Lombards, were lost on a people who considered all pomp offensive both to God and man. They saw the sublimity of simple plainness both in word and life. Their caliph lived on rice, and saddled his camel with his own hands. He ordered a palace to be burned, which Seyd, who had conquered for him the capital of Persia, had built for his occupation. Unsocial, bigoted, austere, drinking no wine, accumulating no personal wealth, how was the mind of this warrior of the wilderness to be trained to the habits of civilized society, or turned aside from the rude instincts of destructiveness and domination? But the Arab intellect was subtle and active. Mohammedanism, indeed, armed the multitude in an exciting cause, and sent them forth like a destroying fire; but there was wisdom, policy, refinement, among the chiefs. While they devastated the worn-out territories of the Persian, and laid waste his ostentatious cities, which had been purposely built in useless places to show the power of the king, they founded great towns on sites so adapted for the purposes of trade and protection that they continue to the present time the emporiums and fortresses of their lands. Balsorah, at the top of the Persian Gulf, at the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates, was as wisely selected for the commercial wants of that period as Constantinople itself. Bagdad was encouraged, Cufa built and peopled in exchange for the gorgeous but unwholesome Madayn, from which Yezdegird was driven. Many other towns rose under the protection of the Crescent; and by the same impulse which made the Saracens anxious to raise new centres of wealth and enterprise in the East, they were excited to the most amazing efforts to make themselves masters of the greatest city in the world, the seat of arts, of literature, and religion; and they pushed forward from river to river, from plain to plain, till, in the year 672, they raised their victorious standard in front of the walls of Constantinople. Here, however, a new enemy came to the encounter, and for the first time scattered dismay among the Moslem ranks. From the towers and turrets came down a shower of fire, burning, scorching, destroying, wherever it touched. Projected to great distances, and wrapping in a moment ship after ship in unextinguishable flames, these discharges appeared to the warriors of the Crescent a supernatural interference against them. This was the famous Greek fire, of which the components are not now known, but it was destructive beyond gunpowder itself. Water could not quench it, nor length of time weaken its power. For five successive years the assault was renewed by fresh battalions of the Saracens, but always with the same result. So, giving up at last their attempts against a place guarded by lightning and by the unmoved courage of the Greek population, they poured their thousands along the northern shores of Africa. Cyrene, the once glorious capital of the Pentapolis, in which Carthage saw her rival and Athens her superior, yielded to their power. Everywhere high-peaked mosques, rising where a short time before the shore had been unoccupied or in cities where the Basilicas of Christian worship had been thrown down, marked the course of conquest. Carthage received its new lords. Hippo, the bishopric of the best of ancient saints, the holy Augustine, saw its church supplanted by the temples of the Arabian impostor. A check was sustained at Tchuda, where their course was interrupted by a combined assault of Christian Greeks and the indigenous Berbers. Internal troubles also arrested their career, for there were disputes for the succession, and court intrigues and open murders, and all the usual accompaniments of a contest for an elective throne. One after another, the Caliphs had been murdered, or had died of broken hearts. The old race—the “Companions,” as they were called, because they had been the contemporaries and friends of Mohammed—had died out. Ali, after three disappointments, had at last been chosen. His sons Hassan and Hossein had been put to death; and it was only in the time of the eighth successor, when Abdelmalek had overcome all competition, that the unity of the Moslem Empire was restored, and the word given for conquest as before. This was in the 77th year of the Hegira, (698 of our era,) and an army was let loose upon the great city of Carthage, at the same time that movements were again ordered across the limits of the Grecian Empire, in Asia, and advances made towards Constantinople. Carthage fell—Tripoli was occupied—and now, with their territories stretching in unbroken line from Syria along the two thousand miles of the southern shore of the great Mediterranean Sea, the conquerors rested from their labours for a while, and prepared themselves for a dash across the narrow channel, from which the hills of Atlas and the summits of Gibraltar are seen at the same time. What has Europe, with its divided peoples, its worn-out kings, its indolent Church, and exhausted fields, to oppose to this compact phalanx of united blood, burning with fanatical faith, submissive to one rule, and supported by all the wealth of Asia and Africa; whose fleets sweep the sea, and whose myriads are every day increased by the accession of fresh nations of Berbers, Mauritanians, and the nameless children of the desert?

This is the hopeless century. Manhood, patriotism, Christianity itself, are all at the lowest ebb. But let us turn to the next, and see how good is worked out of evil, and acknowledge, as in so many instances the historian is obliged to do, that man can form no estimate of the future from the plainest present appearances, but that all things are in the hands of a higher intelligence than ours.