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object of ridicule or ground of offence. By its very familiarity and kindliness, this society was liable to the invasion of the garrulous and the tiresome; but even the specimens of that inevitable species which were found there, were more tolerable than in houses of greater pretence, and became inspired by the genius of the place with some sense of mercy or of shame.

From the multitudinous shape which London society is now assuming, two consequences are imminent; the rarity of these huge reunions from the unfitness or inability of our houses to contain them, and the retirement within a very limited circle of relatives and private friends of those persons who would have been willing, in the old time, to have contributed a proper share to the social enjoyment of others. With the excuse of real discomfort abroad, joined to an Englishman's natural inclinations to stay at home; with the difficulty of meeting the few he likes, added to the certainty of encountering a crowd he abhors; with the increasing severity of the duties and responsibilities of public life, and the diminution of the external respect and importance it imparts, there is every inducement to our wealthier, and nobler, and more fastidious countrymen to retain an exclusiveness of habits and an isolation of life, which can be indulged in with impunity by Legitimists in Paris or Men of Letters in Boston, but which, if systematically persisted in, will seriously impair the relations of classes, and the political structure of our civil existence. The great can no longer remain in an empyrean of their own, even if that atmosphere be purer, wiser, and better than the world below; but, as unfortunately it is the tendency of all exclusiveness of this kind to generate a very different kind of atmosphere, there is the double peril of the injury to the order and the damage to the individuals. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say, that such a society as the Misses Berry established and maintained for nearly half a century-bringing together on a common ground of friendly intercourse, not only men illustrious in different walks of life, but what might aptly be called the men of the day-men who had won and men who were winning, men who wished to learn and men ready to teach, restrained and softened by a womanly influence that never degenerated into that social police which a less skilful hostess often finds necessary to impose-had its moral and political bearings, besides its personal and superficial influences.

This then is the real meaning and right of such persons to respect and remembrance. The inexplicable Sympathies underlie all hnman association and are the foundation of the civil order of the world. That men should care for one another at all, thought Mohammed, is always a mystery; and it is just in proportion

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that they care for one another, so as to take an interest in one another's daily life, that society is harmonised, and, beyond Mohammed, christianised. Honour, then, to the good old ladies who helped on this good work. They will soon be only personally remembered by those to whom the streets of London have become a range of inhabited tombs; yet the day may be distant before social tradition forgets the modest house in Curzon-street, where dwelt the Berrys.

In these pages we have spoken almost indifferently of these sisters in the singular and the plural. And this is, in truth, a fair representation of their relation to one another. It was said that after Mary's unhappy engagement their friendship was lessened; but there is no sign of it in these volumes. They appear on the scene sometimes single, sometimes double, owing to the sororal condition perhaps more than the elder and the abler would willingly have accepted. Agnes, it is clear, would have been nothing above an amiable, cheery, pretty woman, but for Mary's superiority; yet it is undeniable that her liveliness was a most necessary complement to Miss Berry's graver disposition, and it is hard to say which was the greater gainer by the faculties of the other. During an illness, in which Mary was supposed to be seriously attacked, Mr. Rogers came to see her, not having visited the house for many years previous. She received him with great kindness, but, after some strong expressions of sympathy and interest on his part, Agnes, bearing no longer what she, we think wrongly, believed to be a false and barren exhibition of feeling, burst out, You might have been, and you were not, anything to us when we were living, and you now come and insult us with your civilities when we are nigh dead.' This was a specimen of the more passionate, and, it may be, one-sided nature, which Agnes never concealed, and which time did not subdue.

Mary Berry went on for a short time bravely enduring life. Within the year the sisters lay together in the pleasant grave-yard of Petersham, close to the scenes which they had inspired with so many happy associations. To few it is given, as to these, to retain in extreme old age not only the clearness of the head but the brightness of the heart-to leave in those about them no sense of relief from the wayward second-childishness which so sadly. rounds the life of man, but a pure regret that these almost patriarchal lives could not have lasted still longer.

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ART. VII.—1. A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-3. By William Gifford Palgrave, late of the 8th Regiment Bombay N. I. London, 1865. 2. Histoire de l'Egypte sous le Gouvernement de Mohammed Aly; ou, Récit des Evènements Politiques et Militaires qui ont eu lieu depuis le départ des Français jusqu'en 1823. Par M. Félix Mengin. Ouvrage enrichi de Notes par MM. Langlés et Jomard, et précédé d'une Introduction Historique par M. Agoub. Paris, 1823.

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RABIA and the Arabs have been subjects of some interest or curiosity to us all from our childhood. The story of Hagar and her son Ishmael moved our pity and excited our sympathy; and the remarkable manner in which the Arabs have fulfilled the destiny assigned to Ishmael and his descendants, before he was born-' He will be a wild man; his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him'-could not fail to take hold of the imagination. We have all enjoyed the tales of the thousand and one nights-'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments—and have roamed through Bagdad with the magnificent and humorous Kalif Haroon el Resheed, in quest of adventures. One of our earliest voyages was probably to Serandeeb and the islands of the Eastern seas, with Sinbad the Sailor. We learned arithmetic by means of the signs still called the Arabic numerals; and Algebra (Al-gebr) we also derive, as its name intimates, from the Arabs. It would be difficult to estimate how much science and the everyday business of the world owe to these two gifts. The Arabs were the pioneers of Oriental commerce, the navigators and merchants who first made Western Asia and Europe acquainted with the products of India and of the Eastern Archipelago; and they were, and down to our own time have continued to be, the commercial carriers between the ports of Arabia and the shores of the Mediterranean. It was with a view to participate in this lucrative Eastern commerce that Solomon entered into a trading partnership with Hiram of Tyre, and built Tadmor in the wilderness,' on an oasis which still retains that name, to facilitate the passage of caravans. The discoveries of Vasco de Gama diverted the greater part of that commerce into another channel; but it has begun to revert to its original course; and the time is probably not distant when the more precious commodities imported from the East will all be brought to us by the ancient routes; but when that time arrives, the Arab and his camel will no longer be the carriers.

If the descendants of Ishmael, or, as the Arabs call him, Ismael, inherited from their Father Abraham his belief in the one God,

they

they must, after a time, have lapsed into the idolatry of the elder branch of the Arab family, inhabiting the southern part of the peninsula, who, according to their own account, are not Ismaelites, but descendants of Kahtan-the Joktan of the Hebrews-for at the commencement of the Christian era all the Arabs seem to have worshipped idols. Yet this was probably about the period of their greatest commercial prosperity and highest literary development. At some time or times, not well ascertained, during the first centuries of our era, certain tribes embraced the Christian faith, and retained it until the swords of Mahomed's disciples forced them to change the Bible for the Koran; but ultimately all became Mahomedans.

When the Arabs, not without resistance, had been constrained or induced to accept as a new revelation the religion of the pseudo Prophet of Mekka, they became united by that bond. under his authority; but the whole population of Arabia could hardly have amounted to ten millions, scattered over an area of nearly a million square miles, and divided into numerous tribes, which for ages had been at almost perpetual feud one with another. Mahomed, however, lived long enough to consolidate his power in Arabia, though not long enough to effect any conquests beyond it. That task he bequeathed to his successors. He died A.D. 632, and before the close of 638 the Arabs, after gaining sanguinary victories over the Roman and Persian armies, had subdued the whole of Syria, Egypt, and Persia. The inhabitants of those subjugated countries were almost everywhere compelled to renounce their ancient faith, and to accept that of their conquerors. This was not merely the nominal acceptance of a new creed; the change involved a complete social revolution; for not only the pre-existing civil and criminal laws, but what concerned the domestic relations of these unwilling converts, was subverted and replaced by the laws and injunctions contained in the Koran. Yet it is strange that wherever Islam was then and thus planted, it has taken root and flourished.

The

As the power of the Kalifs, Mahomed's successors, became consolidated, and the tribute of the subject nations poured into their treasury, their courts became centres of civilisation, and their munificence attracted the learned of other countries. Philosophy of ancient Greece was taught on the banks of the Tigris, at a time when it was still unknown in Western Europe; and under the liberal patronage of the Kalifs the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, and other Greek authors, were translated into Arabic, with ample commentaries.* The lieu

They were translated, not direct from the Greek, but from Syriac versions already existing.

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tenants of the Kalifs who governed the subject kingdoms were men of cultivated minds and polished manners, who maintained the state and exercised the munificence of princes; and numberless Arabs, of all grades, employed in the public service, and in the conquered countries, partook of the cultivation, the refinement, and the wealth which that service imparted, and shared the dignity of the dominant race.

Meanwhile, the Mahomedan religion had spread far beyond the limits of the Arab conquests in Asia. The tribes of Toorkistan had accepted the new creed, and carried it to the confines of China, to Afghanistan, and to Northern India. From Egypt the Arabs themselves pushed their conquests in Africa to the shores of the Atlantic, and, crossing into Spain, subdued and colonised the richest portions of that country: they even penetrated to the heart of France, and were with difficulty driven back by Charles Martel. Sicily became an Arab possession, and Malta was permanently occupied. The commerce which for ages the Arabs had maintained with the islands in the eastern seas had led to the establishment of agencies in those countries; and it is probable that long before the rise of Mahomedanism, perhaps in remote ages, there had been a considerable migration of Arabs to the principal islands. The written character of the dominant Malay race is Arabic; their language contains a large proportion of Arabic; and their physical and moral characteristics favour the belief that they are allied to the Arabs in blood; but however this may be, they readily became converts to Islam. The Arabs who had settled along the eastern coast of Africa to the Mozambique Channel also conformed to the new faith of the parent stock.

But although the religion of the Arab extended, his political and military power decayed, and ultimately collapsed. Central Asia sent forth from its numerous nomade and scanty urban population, as Arabia had done, successive armies of merciless conquerors, who wrested from the Kalifs the greater part of their dominions, finally overthrew the Kalifat, and in Asia pressed the Arab back almost within the limits of his native peninsula. After having exercised dominion for several centuries, enjoying the luxury of splendid courts and great cities, amidst the highest cultivation of those times, he retired to his mountain-home or his tent-his dates and his dourra-his camels, sheep, and horses -to resume his pristine life and occupations, his clan-feuds, and predatory habits.

Neither the new religion and laws which he had adopted, nor four centuries of dominion, luxury, and refinement in cities, nor foreign intercourse, had changed the character of the Arab. Such

as

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