this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity,
in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There

is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ every way;
true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than

spiritual: the Horse,--"hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he
"_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!" Such living likenesses were never

since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublimereconciliation; oldest choral melody
as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as

the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in
the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.--

To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of
worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah, at

Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken,
as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century

before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the
Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man might _see_ it fall out

of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built over
both. A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out

like life from the hard earth;--still more so in those hot dry countries,
where it is the first condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name

from the bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the Well
which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite

and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for thousands of
years. A curious object, that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in

the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; "twenty-seven cubits
high;" with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of

lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_
night,--to glitter again under the stars. An authenticfragment of the

oldest Past. It is the _Keblah_ of all Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to
Morocco, the eyes of innumerable praying men are turned towards it, five

times, this day and all days: one of the notablest centres in the
Habitation of Men.

It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah Stone and Hagar's
Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca took

its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much decayed now. It has no
natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren

hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its very bread, have to
be imported. But so many pilgrims needed lodgings: and then all places of

pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of trade. The first day
pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where men see themselves assembled

for one object, they find that they can accomplish other objects which
depend on meeting together. Mecca became the Fair of all Arabia. And

thereby indeed the chief staple and warehouse of whatever Commerce there
was between the Indian and the Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy.

It had at one time a population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those
Eastern and Western products; importers for their own behoof of provisions

and corn. The government was a kind of irregulararistocratic republic,
not without a touch of theocracy. Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some

rough way, were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish
were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe.

The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut asunder by deserts, lived under
similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen,

carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with
another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this

meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common
adoration;--held mainly by the _inward_ indissoluble bond of a common blood

and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by
the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciouslywaiting for the day

when they should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear
to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and

fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever
transacted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at

once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the
world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too; and could

not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there.
It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our

Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the
Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of

his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six
years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense:

he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old.
A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favorite

son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the
lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He loved the

little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They must take care of that
beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he.

At his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in
charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head

of the house. By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything
betokens, Mahomet was brought up in the best Arab way.

Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on trading journeys and such
like; in his eighteenth year one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in

war. But perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is one we find
noted as of some years' earlier date: a journey to the Fairs of Syria.

The young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign world,--with
one foreign element of endless moment to him: the Christian Religion. I

know not what to make of that "Sergius, the Nestorian Monk," whom Abu
Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could have

taught one still so young. Probably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this
of the Nestorian Monk. Mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his

own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to
him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would

doubtless be taken in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen
in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These

journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet.
One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning;

of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was
but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that

Mahomet never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was
all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place,

with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it
was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no

books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain
rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The

wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was
in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls,

flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates
with this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the

Wilderness; has to grow up so,--alone with Nature and his own Thoughts.
But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His

companions named him "_Al Amin_, The Faithful." A man of truth and
fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. They noted

that _he_ always meant something. A man rather taciturn in speech; silent
when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he

did speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only sort of
speech _worth_ speaking! Through life we find him to have been regarded as

an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincerecharacter;
yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;--a good laugh in him

withal: there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who
cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious honest

face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes;--I somehow like too that
vein on the brow, which swelled up black when he was in anger: like the

"_horseshoe_ vein" in Scott's _Redgauntlet_. It was a kind of feature in
the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it

prominent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, yet just,
true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all

uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there.
How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled

in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one
can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her

regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful
intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she

forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most
affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress;

loving her truly, and her alone. It goes greatly against the impostor
theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely

quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was done. He was
forty before he talked of any mission from Heaven. All his irregularities,

real and supposed, date from after his fiftieth year, when the good Kadijah
died. All his "ambition," seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an honest

life; his "fame," the mere good opinion of neighbors that knew him, had