charges and insinuations against one, whose manner of life the historian before quoted thus describes:

'He laid down a plan of life, to which he ever after rigorously adhered. He resolved to wear no expensive clothing; to have no paintings except of a devotional character in his house; to possess no splendid furniture, to use no coach or carriage, but make his visitations on foot. His family was to consist of two priests, one to act as his chaplain, the other to superintend his servants and temporalities; his table to be plain and frugal. He resolved to be present at all religious and devotional meetings and festivals in the churches; to distribute abundant alms; to visit the sick and poor in person; to rise every day at four, meditate for an hour, read private service, then prayers with his family; then to read the Scripture, celebrate the holy Eucharist, and afterwards apply to business till dinner. He then gave an hour to conversation, and spent the remainder of the afternoon in business and prayer. After supper he read a pious book to his family for an hour; then prayed with them, and retired to his private devotions and to rest. Such was the general mode of life of this excellent man.'-Palmer, p. 316.

Of such an one, M. Michelet says: S'il permet aux religieuses tel et tel petit mensonge, faut-il croie qu'il se les soit refusés toujours à lui-même;' and that in his zeal to convert, he resorted to means scarcely honourable- interest, money, places, authority, intimidation'-(pp. 27, 28;) and labours, by fine inuendoes and insinuations, to make it appear, that his feelings towards Madame de Chantal were unbecoming their relationship to one another, and that, at any rate, Madame de Chantal's passionate love for him was of that sort, that he was obliged to keep her at a distance, though it in no way altered his notions of her holiness. This is certainly a token of the spirit in which M. Michelet sets himself to examine facts. And it is not to be wondered at, that, with such predispositions, his moral vision has detected what others would never have suspected.

Here we take leave of Eugene Sue and his school, with the hope and conviction, that if ever there should rise up among us an infidel to rake up slanderous accusations against timehonoured names in our Church (as e.g. if some one were gravely to revive the slander against Hooker,) and the book were to be translated for the similar edification of the French nation; there will not be wanting some French priest, who, for the love of truth, will lift up his voice, even without inquiry, and say, Though these are not of our Communion, we will not believe that men who have been and are so honoured should have been of such corrupt minds, and have so made a "gain of godliness."

We have now completed our task, not a pleasant one, and at greater length than we had intended. But it seemed better to endeavour to give readers a just notion of the contents of our book at large; and ten volumes spread over a great space. It is well we should know what sort of writer one of the leading popular authors in France is.

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ART. VI.-The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud; or, Biblical Legends of the Mussulmans, compiled from Arabic sources, and compared with Jewish traditions. By DR. G. WEIL, Librarian of the University of Heidelberg, Fellow of the Asiatic Society of Paris, &c. &c. &c. Translated from the German, with occasional Notes. By Rev. H. DOUGLAS, A.M. London: Longman & Co. Paternoster-row, 1846.

THE work before us is somewhat ambitiously presented to the English public, as an Epitome of Mahomedan theology and morals.' It is really a collection of the Mahomedan versions of Scripture narratives, as first sketched in the Koran, and afterwards filled in from the traditions preserved in the commentaries upon it. It is merely the Mussulman supplement to the Bible, correcting and explaining it.

The translator's object would appear not to have been merely a literary one. He observes, that the peculiar character of 'these legends, their constant allusion to scriptural facts, with 'which most Bible-readers strongly identify themselves, their ' novel and gorgeous and often sublime inventions, investing 'them at once with the fidelity of historical detail, and the freshness and fascination of Oriental fiction, seem to fit them especially for popular instruction. If it be asked what benefit may be derived from promulgating the tenets of a confessedly erro'neous system, it is replied that a distinction ought to be 'observed between the false systems that have ceased to be believed, and those which are still maintained as divine truths by any portion of mankind.

It may be questioned whether the former ought at all to 'be taught, although there are reasons why even the exploded 'mythology of the ancients should be known; but respecting the second class, to which the religion of Mohamed belongs, there should be but one opinion.' (Preface, pp. iv. v.)

No doubt, the fact of Mahometanism is a mysterious one; and persons who go out to convert Mussulmen ought to know what their religion is. But why this should be a reason for making its legends matter of popular instruction,' and what more special benefit' there is in promulgating the tenets,' among general readers, of a living, rather than of a dead false religion, is not so clear. But the translator probably had no particular meaning in his words; and so we pass on to the book itself.

There is nothing very new in the book, except the idea of bringing all these legends together. They are all to be found in Sale's Koran,' and its notes; and many of them

have been made familiar to English readers by the extracts and illustrations given in popular poems. Every one knows how Lord Byron and Mr. Southey have used them; the one attracted by their glittering sensualism, and the other by the tone of deep and solemn religion so strangely mixed up with it. Dr. Weil has thrown the various accounts into the shape of connected narratives, and intends his book for popular reading. His preface, which gives a short statement of the sources from which these legends are derived, is written in the unimpassioned and equivocal tone of one to whom matters of popular belief are simply matters of historical criticism, but who rather shrinks from saying so.

We shall not enter here into any question about the origin of these legends. We shall merely state that Dr. Weil disclaims for them entirely the character of native or Arabian traditions. They thus lose the value or the interest which they would have if they came from an original source; if they represented the genuine recollections, however confused, of the children of Ishmael. In their present form they are simple inventions of Mahometanism, which, according to Dr. Weil, borrowed its materials in this case, not from Arabian but from Jewish tradition, or that of heretical Christians.

Respecting the origin of these legends, it will appear from what has been said, that, with the exception of that of Christ, it is to be found in Jewish traditions, where, as will appear by the numerous citations from the Midrash, they are yet to be seen. Many traditions respecting the prophets of the Old Testament are found in the Talmud, which was then already closed, so that there can be no doubt that Mohamed heard them from Jews, to whom they were known, either by Scripture or tradition. For that these legends were the common property both of Jews and Arabs cannot be presumed, inasmuch as Mohamed communicated them to the Arabs as something new, and specially revealed to himself; and inasmuch as the latter actually accused him of having received instruction from foreigners. Introd. pp. x. xi.

Dr. Weil considers it doubtful how far the Arabians were acquainted with their own origin:

:

It is difficult to find out with precision how much of this last legend [of Abraham] was known in Arabia before Mohamed; but it is probable that as soon as the Arabs became acquainted with the Scriptures and traditions of the Jews, they employed them in tracing down to Mohamed the origin both of their race and of their temple. But that they possessed no historical information respecting it, will appear from the fact that, notwithstanding their genealogical skill, they confess themselves unable to trace Mohamed's ancestry beyond the twentieth generation. It is, however, quite evident not only that the legends of Abraham and Ishmael, which related much that was favourable to the latter, concerning which the Bible is silent, but that all the others in like manner were more or less changed and amplified by Mohamed, and adapted to his own purposes. Yet to him unquestionably belongs the highly poetical garb in which we find these legends, and which was calculated to attract and capti

vate the imaginative minds of the Arabs much more than the dull Persian fables narrated by his opponents.'-Introd. pp. xii-xiii.

Whatever interest therefore attaches to them as legends, as fragments of that mysterious and awful tradition which broods over the East, belongs to them as Jewish not Mahometan legends. Their interest in this latter character lies forwardin their effects. They seized at once on the Eastern mind, and have kept possession of it ever since. The religious temper of the East-so earnest and serious, and so wild and impatient of discipline, which Christianity tended to chasten, and limit, and refine-which the early short-lived heresies sported with and disquieted—which while it owned the severe greatness of the Church, was annoyed by its restraints, its purifying and sobering aims,-found at last its exact model and form in Mahometanism. In the absence of any thing else it was content with Christianity; but the religion that it yearned after was Mahometanism,-at once commanding, grave, stable, and yet intensely and exclusively Eastern ;-extravagant but not progressive without limits to imagination, but without impulse to change, which relieved the Eastern mind from the discipline of continual though slow improvement, and left it to that stationary untamed wildness in which it delighted. How closely Mahometanism was adapted for those to whom it was preached, the experience of more than a thousand years has shown. And these legends are specimens of that adaptation ;-of the temper of those who framed, and of those who so readily adopted them, and to whom they still represent the early history of the world.

The purpose of all these legends is, of course, to familiarize and reconcile the mind to the idea that the mission of Mahomet was the culminating point of God's dealings with man; and in their original place in the Koran, they come in directly with this object. But in the legends themselves there are two distinct characters to be traced. They are either controversial, or merely poetical. The first are direct falsifications of Scripture, for the benefit of Mahometanism, or histories of the old prophets, framed with a tacit and obvious reference to the circumstances of Mahomet's life. The second are bursts of Eastern feeling and imagination, impatient of a bare outline of fact, and seeking for an expression of its ideas,-grand, wonderful, or grotesque, of the invisible world; and these are worked out on a ground, for the most part, of Jewish tradition.

Of this latter class is the legend of the Creation and Fall,full of strange wild thoughts, and, in the midst of its extravagance, not without the shadows of great truths. This is the history of the formation of Adam:

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The four most exalted angels, Gabriel, Michael, Israfil, and Israil, were commanded to bring from the four corners of the earth the dust out of which Allah formed the body of Adam, all save the head and heart. For these he employed exclusively the sacred earth of Mecca and Medina, from the very spots on which, in later times, the holy Kaaba and the sepulchre Mohamed were erected.

Even before it was animated, Adam's beautiful form excited the admiration of the angels who were passing by the gates of Paradise, where Allah had laid it down. But Iblis coveted man's noble form, and the spiritual and lovely expression of his countenance, and said, therefore, to his fellows, "How can this hollow piece of earth be well pleasing in your sight? Nothing but weakness and frailty may be expected of this creature." When all the inhabitants of heaven, save Iblis, had gazed on Adam in long and silent wonder, they burst out in praises to Allah, the Creator of the first man, who was so tall that when he stood erect upon the earth his head reached to the seventh heaven.

'Allah then directed the angels to bathe the soul of Adam, which he had created a thousand years before his body, in the sea of glory which proceedeth from himself, and commanded her to animate his yet lifeless form. The soul hesitated, for she was unwilling to exchange the boundless heavens for this narrow home; but Allah said, "Thou must animate Adam, even against thy will; and as the punishment of thy disobedience, thou shalt one day be separated from him also against thy will." Allah then breathed upon her with such violence, that she rushed through the nostrils of Adam into his head. On reaching his eyes they were opened, and he saw the throne of Allah, with the inscription, "There is but one GOD, and Mohamed is his Messenger." The soul then penetrated to his ears, and he heard the angels praising Allah; thereupon his own tongue was loosed, and he cried, "Blessed be thou, my Creator, the only One and Eternal!" And Allah answered, " For this end wast thou created: thou and thy descendants shall worship me: so shall ye ever obtain grace and mercy." The soul at last pervaded all the limbs of Adam; and when she had reached his feet she gave him the power to rise. But on rising, he was obliged to shut his eyes, for a light shone on him from the throne of the Lord which he was unable to endure; and pointing with one hand towards it, whilst he shaded his eyes with the other, he inquired, "O Allah! what flames are those?"— "It is the light of a prophet who shall descend from thee, and appear on earth in the latter times. By my glory, only for his sake have I created thee and the whole world. In heaven, his name is Ahmed, but he shall be called Mohamed on earth, and he shall restore mankind from vice and falsehood to the path of virtue and truth.'

All created things were then assembled before Adam, and Allah taught him the names of all beasts, of birds, and of fish, the manner in which they are sustained and propagated, and explained their peculiarities, and the ends of their existence. Finally, the angels were convoked, and Allah commanded them to bow down to Adam, as the most free and perfect of his creatures, and as the only one that was animated by his breath. Israfil was the first to obey, whence Allah confided to him the Book of Fate. The other angels followed his example: Iblis alone was disobedient, saying with disdain, "Shall I, who am created of fire, worship a being formed of the dust?" He was therefore expelled from Heaven, and the entrance into Paradise was forbidden him.

Adam breathed more freely after the removal of Iblis, and by command of Allah, he addressed the myriads of angels, who were standing around him, in praise of His omnipotence, and the wonders of his universe: and on this occasion he manifested to the angels that he far surpassed them in