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defence for the country.—If this | be equally assessed upon those

abuse exists, as has been asserted, it is our duty to correct it-as to number, I would have it not so large as to be either dangerous to the liberty, or oppressive to the pockets of the people-It is our duty to take care of both these points, and we have it fully in our power to do so. The present establishment appears to me to of fend in neither of these particulars; and not to be larger than is really required.-As to the navy -I would not have it disproportioned to our wants or strength; but sufficient for the defence of our coast at the commencement of a war, with a provision of means for an immediate enlargement when required. It should not be a monster living on the bosom of the waters, and devouring all the productions of the land; but large enough to maintain its high character on the most sudden emergency. As to taxes; they should neither grind the poor, nor be unjust to the rich; they should be fair and necessary; and above all

bound to contribute to the wants of the state-So much every government has a right to exact from its citizens; and so much every good citizen will cheerfully afford to his government. But the first principle in relation to the money concerns of a people, is a regular and inexorable accountability for its expenditures. Without this, no taxes will be sufficient to supply the demands of any administration. I will conclude by explaining the course I shall take on the subject directly before the committee-I will vote against the motion of the honorable member from Kentucky (Mr. Hardin) because it expunges a land tax altogether from the system of revenue-I shall also vote against the resolution of the committee of finance, as amended on the motion of the honorable speaker, because it introduces inequa lity and uncertainty in the system, which ought to be, and professes to be permanent; but I am perfectly willing to maintain the resolu tion as reported by the committee.

ELEGANT LITERATURE.

ARABIAN LITERATURE;
From the French of SISMONDI.

Translated by JOHN S. SMITH, Esq. of Baltimore

THE whole West was plunged | in barbarism; population and wealth had disappeared; the inhabitants dispersed in small numbers, over immense regions, struggled with difficulty against ever-recurring misfortunes;--invasions of barbarians,-intestine wars, feudal tyranny; scarcely could an existence constantly menaced by famine and the sword, be preserved; and in this invariable state of violence and fear, there remained no leisure for the indulgence of intellectual enjoyments. Eloquence, having no object, was impossible; poetry unknown; philosophy interdicted as a revolt against religion;-even language was destroyed,-whilst barbarous and provincial dialects usurped the place of that polished Latin tongue, which had for a long period bound together the Western nations, and which had hoarded for them so many treasures of thought and of taste. But, at this very epoch, an infant state, which by its conquests and fanaticism had contributed more than any other to check the culture of sciences and letters, now secure in its dominion, became in its turn, the protectress of literature. The Arab, master of a great part of the East,-of the abode of the ancient Magi and Chaldeans, whence the first lights of knowledge had been diffused over the earth, of fertile Egypt, for years the repository of human science, -of smiling Asia minor, where

poetry, taste, and the fine arts, first developed themselves,-of burning Africa, land of impetuous eloquence, and subtle genius; the Arab seemed to unite the advantages of all the countries he had vanquished. He had obtained by arms the fullest success which the most rapacious ambition could covet. The extremities of the East, with those of Africa, had submitted to the empire of the Caliphs:-immense riches were the fruits of their conquests, and these Arabs, formerly rude and savage, but become lords of the finest regions of the universe, regions where softness ever held the greatest sway, now wantoned in boundless voluptuousness. To every enjoyment which human industry, excited by immense wealth, could procure,-to all those which could flatter the senses and intoxicate existence, the Arabs wished to add the pleasures of the mind, the flower of all the arts, of all the sciences, of all human knowledge, the luxury of thought and of imagination. In this new career, their conquests were not less rapid than they had been in that of arms; nor was the empire which they founded in it less extensive; it arose, too, with the same surprising celerity, to the same gigantic magnitude, and both seated on foundations equally frail, were of equally short duration.

The period of Mahomet's flight from Mecca to Medina, which is

from that literature by the Spa-
niards and Provençals, had per-
vaded all the Southern idioms. If
we could plung deeper in Ara-
bian literature, if we unfold
to the eyes of our readers those
brilliant fictions which made of
Asia a fairy land, if
we could
make them taste the charms of
that inspired poetry, which, in ex-
pressing the most impetuous pas-
sions, employed the boldest and
most ingenious figures, and com-
municated to the soul, sensations,
of which our more timid poets
are ignorant, we should, without
doubt, find ample recompense for
the faults we might remark in a
taste so different and so novel. But
we cannot flatter ourselves with
the hope of being able to impart to
the soul of another, the impres-
sion of the beauties of a foreign

called the Hegira, answers to the | year 622 of our era; the pretended conflagration of the Alexandrian library by Amrou, general of the Caliph Omar, corresponds with the year 641, the period of the most profound barbarism of the Saracens, and this event, doubtful as it is, has left the most painful memorial of their contempt for learning. Scarcely had one century elapsed from the time at which this savage transaction is supposed to have taken place, when a passionate love of the arts, sciences, and poetry, ascended, in 750, the throne of the Caliphs, with the family of the Abbassides. In Grecian literature, the age of Pericles, had been prepared by near eight centuries of progressive culture-from the Trojan war (1209 to 431 B. C.) In the Latin, the age of Augustus was, in like man-language, except in so far as we ner, the eighth from the foundation of Rome. In that of France, the age of Louis IV. is the twelfth from Clovis: but in the rapid progress of the Arabs, the age of AlMamoun, the father of letters, and the Augustus of Bagdad, is only one hundred and fifty years from the origin of the monarchy.

All the literature of the Arabs bears the marks of this rapid advancement; and that of modern Europe formed in the Arabian school, and enriched by them, gives us at this day frequent occasion to note ancient remains of a too hasty developement, and of that inebriation of intellect which had led astray the fancy and taste of the people of the East.

It is my intention to give a slight sketch of Arabian literature, for the purpose of making known both its spirit and the influence which it has exerted over the people of Europe; and in order to show the manner in which the oriental style, borrowed as it is

feel them ourselves. To make others feel we must ourselves feel, and to inspire confidence we must judge by our own senti

ments.

Ali, the fourth Caliph after Mahomet, was the first in the Arabian empire who extended any protection to the belles-lettres; his rival and successor Moaviah, the first of the Ommiades, (661-680) was still more indulgent to them; he invited to his court the men who were most distinguished for science; he assembled around him poets; and, as he had already subjected to his empire several Grecian islands and provinces, the sciences of the Greeks began, under him, to exert their first influence over the Arabians.

After the extinction of the dynasty of the Ommiades, that of the Abbassides was still more favourable to literature. Al-Manzor or Manzour, the second of those princes, (754-775) called near his person a Greek physician,

named George Backtischwah, who was the first that gave to the Arabians translations of the learned Greek works on medicine. Backtischwah, or Bocht Jesu, was descended from those christians, who, persecuted in the Greek empire for their attachment to the Nestorian dogmas, had gone in search of peace and security among the Persians, and who founded there, in the province of Gondisapor, a school of medicine, already famous in the seventh century. Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, (429-431) who made, according to the orthodox creed, too marked a difference between two persons, as well as two natures in Christ, manifested a persecuting zeal, of which he was soon in his turn, the victim: thousands of Nestorians, his disciples, perished at the stake and by the sword, after the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. These, in their turn, massacred, towards the year 500, in Persia, between seven and eight thousand of their orthodox or monophysite adversaries; but, after this first retaliation, they devoted themselves to the sciences with more ardour, and at the same time with more charity, than the other christian churches: they preserved, in the Syriac language, the literature of Greece, at a period when superstition was crushing it in the Eastern empire. From their school of Gondisapor, issued a crowd of Jewish and Nestorian savans, who, obtaining repute for their skill in medicine, transported to the Orientals all the rich inheritance of Grecian knowledge.

The renowned Haroun-al-Raschild, who reigned from 786 to 809, gloried in the protection he accorded to letters; and, we are assured by the historian Elmacin,

that he never undertook a journey without having at least, one hundred literati in his train. The Arabian nation is indebted to him for the rapid progress which it made in science and literature, for, he made it a rule, never to build a mosque without attaching to it a school. His successor imitated him, and in a short time, the sciences cultivated in the capital, were diffused to the extremities of the empire of the Caliphs. Whenever the faithful assembled to worship God, they found occasion, in his temple, to render the most noble homage which is permitted to mortals, that of cultivating those faculties which the Creator has bestowed on them. Haroun-al-Raschild was likewise sufficiently exalted above the fanaticism which had previously animated his sect, not to contemn the knowledge acquired by the followers of another creed. The principal of his schools and the chief director of studies in his empire was a Nestorian christian of Damascus, named John Ebn Messua.

But the real protector, the father of Arabian literature, was Al-Mamoun (Mohammed-AbenAmer,) the seventh Abbassid Caliph, and the son of Haroun-alRaschild. Even in the life-time of his father, and during the journey to Khorasan, he took with him as companions, the most celebrated of the learned men of the Greeks, Persians, and Chaldeans. When sovereign, (813-833,) he made Bagdad the centre of all literature; studies, books, savans, were almost the only objects of his attention. The learned became his favourites, his vourites, his ministers. were solely occupied with the advancement of literature; and, it might have been said, that the throne of

the Caliphs had been erected for the Muses. He invited to his court, from every part of the world, all the learned men, of whose existence he could obtain any information;-he retained them by recompenses, honours, and distinctions of every kind; he collected from the subject provinces of Syria, Armenia, and Egypt, all the valuable books which could be discovered; they formed the most precious tribute which the sovereign required; and the governors of provinces with all the officers of administration, were charged above all things, to collect the literary riches of the vanquished countries, and bear them to the foot of the throne. Hundreds of camels were seen entering Bagdad, loaded only with papers and books; and all those which were deemed proper to aid public instruction were immediately translated into Arabic, for the purpose of bringing them within the reach of every one.

Masters, censors, translators, commentators of books, formed the court of Al-Mamoun. It had more the appearance of a learned academy, than the centre of government of a warlike empire. When this Caliph, as a conqueror, dictated peace to the Greek emperor Michael the stammerer, he demanded of him in tribute, a collection of Greek books. The sciences were especially favoured by the Caliph; speculative philosophy was permitted to exercise itself on the highest questions, in spite of the jealous distrust of some fanatic mussulmen, who accused Al-Mamoun of thus endangering Mahometanism. During his reign, medicine counted among its followers several of his most illustrious doctors; civil law had been taught him by the

celebrated Kossa, and as this was, in the estimation of mussulmen, the most religious of all the sciences, it was that to which his subjects devoted themselves with the greatest ardour, whilst AlMamoun gave himself up to his taste for mathematics, which he studied with brilliant success. He undertook the grand operation of measuring the earth, and he had it accomplished at his own expense, by his own mathematicians. The elements of astronomy of Alfragan, (Fragani) and the astronomical tables of Al-Merwasi, were the work of two of his courtiers. This same Al-Mamoun, not less generous than he was enlightened, cried out, when pardoning one of his relations who had revolted against him, in order to usurp the throne," Ah! if they knew what "pleasure I take in pardoning, all "those who have offended me "would hasten to confess to me "their faults."

The progress of the nation in sciences was proportioned to the zeal of its chief. On all sides, and in every city, schools, colleges, and academies were established,— learned men issued from every quarter: Bagdad was alike the capital of letters and of the Caliphs; but Bassora and Cufa were nearly equal to this city in 'celebrity, and produced as many eminent works in prose, and as many distinguished poems. Balckh, Ispahan, and Samarcand, were, in like manner, foci of the sciences. The same zeal was conveyed by the Arabians far beyond the frontiers of Asia. The Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, relates in his Itinerary, that he found at Alexandria more than twenty schools for the instruction of philosophy. Cairo, also contained a great number of colleges, and that of Betzuaila, one of the suburbs of this capital,

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