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ments were spread above, and seven earths beneath. Adam is supposed to have had a hand in the rebuilding of it, also, at a future period, Abraham and his son. The last builder is said to have been Hajjaj bin Yussuf, the general of the Caliph Abd el Malik, in the year of the Hegira 74. The legendaries of the Black Stone are also equally desirous of establishing its antiquity, some asserting that when Allah made covenant with the sons of Adam, on the day of fealty, he placed the paper inside the stone, whence it is supposed it will come forth at the day of judgment, and bear witness to all who have touched it. Those whose minds delight in wandering through mazes of architecture, measurements, and ceremonies, will find a rich feast in the text; let us rather behold the daring pilgrim, clothed in appropriate garb, entering the sanctuary, and the Bait Allah standing before him. On an occasion so well calculated to excite in his breast the most intense feelings, let him speak for himself:—

There at last it lay, the bourn of my long and weary pilgrimage, realizing the plans and hopes of many and many a year. The mirage medium of fancy invested the huge catafalque and its gloomy pall with peculiar charms. There were no giant fragments of hoar antiquity, as in Egypt; no remains of graceful and harmonious beauty, as in Greece and Italy; no barbaric gorgeousness, as in the buildings of India. Yet the view was strange, unique, and how few have looked upon the celebrated shrine! I may truly say, that of all the worshippers who clung weeping to the curtain, or who pressed their beating hearts to the stone, none felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did the hajj from the far north. It was as if the poetical legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving wings of angels, not the sweet breeze of morning, were agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine. But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecstacy of gratified pride.

Having allowed our Pilgrim to express his feelings at the first sight of the hopes of many years realized, we will allow him to describe the scene as it presented itself at night.

The moon, now approaching the full, tipped the brow of Abu Kubays,* and lit

up the spectacle with a more solemn light. In the midst stood the huge bier-like erection, 'Black as the wings

Which some spirit of ill o'er a sepulchre flings,

except where the moon-beams streaked it like jets of silver falling upon the darkest marble. It formed the point of rest for the eye; the little pagodalike buildings and domes around it, with all their gilding and fret-work, vanished. One object, unique in appearance, stood in view the temple of the one Allah, the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, and of his posterity. Sublime it was, and expressing by all the eloquence of fancy the grandeur of the one Idea which vitalized El Islam, and the sternness and steadfastness of its votaries.

The oval pavement round the Kaabah was crowded with men, women, and children, mostly divided into parties, which followed a Mutawwif;

some

walking staidly, and others running, whilst many stood in groups of prayer. What a scene of contrast! Here stalked the Bedouin woman, in her long black robe, like a nun's serge, and poppycoloured face-veil, pierced to show two fiercely flashing orbs. There an Indian woman, with her semi-Tartar features, nakedly hideous, and her thin parenthetical legs, encased in wrinkled tights, hurried round the fane. Every now and then a corpse, borne upon its wooden shell, circuited the shrine by means of four bearers, whom other Moslems, as is the custom, occasionally relieved. A few fair-skinned Turks lounged about, looking cold and repulsive, as their wont is. In one place a fast Calcutta 'Khitmugar' stood, with turban awry and arms a-kimbo, contemplating the view jauntily, as those gentlemen's gentlemen will do. In another, some poor wretch, with arms thrown on high, so that every part of his person might touch the Kaabah, was clinging to the curtain, and sobbing as though his heart would break.

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* Vide sketch of Mecca, ante.

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bareheaded and barefooted in the mid

day September sun. At the cry of Open a path for the hajj who would enter the house,' the gazers made way. Two stout Meccans, who stood below the door, raised me in their arms, whilst a third drew me from above into the building. At the entrance I was accosted by several officials, dark-looking Meccans, of whom the darkest and plainest was a youth of the Beni Shaybah family (who keep the keys of the house), the true sangre azul of El Hijaz. He held in his hand the huge silver-gilt padlock of the Kaabah, and presently taking his seat upon a kind of wooden press in the left-hand corner of the hall, he officially inquired my name, nation, and other particulars. The replies were satisfactory, and the boy Mohammed was authoritatively ordered to conduct me round the building, and recite the prayers. I will not deny that, looking at the windowless walls, the officials at the door, and the crowd below,—

And the place death, considering who I

was,

my feelings were of the trapped-rat description acknowledged by the immortal nephew of his uncle Perez. This did not, however, prevent my carefully observing the scene during our long prayers, and making a rough plan with a pencil upon my white Ihram.

It is an old saying, 'Nothing risk, nothing have; but Mr. Burton but Mr. Burton might claim as a motto, Who risk, have.'

One of the pilgrim's duties is to attend the ceremonies of Mount Arafat, a hill rendered sacred to them by a legend, which states that our first parents having lost their primeval purity by eating wheat, were cast down upon earth. The serpent descended at Ispahan; the peacock at Cabul (what finger had he in the pie?); Satan at Bilbays; Eve at Arafat; and Adam at Ceylon. The latter wandering over the earth in search of his wife, at last found her on the Mountain of Mercy, where she was continually calling upon his name; and in token of recognition the Mount was called Arafat. It was during this pilgrimage of our author that he forgot himself in a manner for which it is vain to seek extenuation. The great event of the day was a sermon,

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the burden of which would have been full of interest to the reader; and where is our pilgrim? where is our hajj of iron nerve and resolute will? where the scientific traveller, to whom danger and privation are welcome, if only he can gather one new fact or idea? Pro pudor! he is dallying with an Arab Delilah, and so far from acknowledging his error, and claiming forgiveness on the ground of repentance, he dares the reviewer's wrath, and the censure of the public, by revelling in the descriptive charms of his Flirtilla.'

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She was a tall girl, about eighteen years old, with regular features, a skin somewhat citron-coloured, but soft and clear, symmetrical eyebrows, the most beautiful eyes, and a figure all grace. There was no head thrown back, no straightened neck, no flat shoulders, no toes turned out; in fact, no elegant barbarisms, but the shape was what the Arabs love-soft, bending, and relaxed, as a woman's figure should be.

Behold the substitute for a sermon! behold what a traveller of iron, brass, and brains, is reduced to, by the charm of a transient glance at a pair of most beautiful eyes!' The ladies, it is true, may canonize him, but what will his patrons of the Royal Geographical Society say? The only excuse we can suggest for him is, that there was danger in the flirtation, which gave it an irresistible attraction. Let us hope he has since seen the error of his ways, and only records his misdemeanour from an exaggerated feeling of truthfulness. One swallow does not make a summer'-let not one blot deface the hajj's whole face.

Our limits warn us we must bring this paper to a close, and we feel how feebly we have conveyed any idea of the interest which every reader will find in the volume we have been reviewing. We could have dwelt upon ceremonies and superstitions as startling as Winking Virgins, Bleeding Madonnas, and Holy Coats; we might have touched upon the absurd ceremony of 'pelting the Devil with stones,' and various other amusing passages most graphically written; or we might have extracted

The entrance to the Kaabah is by a door seven feet above the ground. The author's impression is that the soil around has been worn away to that depth, and that the entrance was originally on a level with the court.

a feast for the geographer, the ethnologist, and the historian. So full is the information his volume contains, that a weekly critic, whose strictures upon Lieutenant Burton's earlier works he manfully repelled, is forced to declare, To those who wish to learn details which Gibbon would have read with interest, and Sale with rapture, we recommend the topographical portion of the work. We might add much more, but space cries, Halt!

Let every class of reader, then, rest assured that in the hajj's

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PROTESTANTISM-ZWINGLE AND HIS TIMES.

SINCE the Founder of the religion

of Christendom bequeathed to twelve chosen witnesses the sacred task of spreading that religion within and beyond the limits of the Holy Land, the progress of Christianity has been marked by change and fluctuation; it has been often checked, often brought to an apparent stand-still; it has not advanced with even pace; sometimes it has crept, sometimes it has rushed; it has had its great epochs, and each epoch has produced its great men. The greatest of these epochs was undoubtedly the Reformation. Protestantism may well be called the revival of Christianity; and if in the course of time it has, like all great movements, degenerated, or rather has been discredited by certain spurious imitations usurping its name, but ignoring its spirit, we cannot do better than keep alive our respect for the great original, by remembering from time to time what it really was; if we have lived to see a party claiming the exclusive title of Protestant, we shall best measure their claim by dwelling on the lives and actions of one or other of the acknowledged Protestant worthies. In the great drama of the German Reformation one figure stands forward prominent above all others-that of Martin Luther, accompanied by his gentle, melancholy, and studious companion, Melancthon. In Switzerland, the same work was effected, not so much by one reforming despot, but as became the genius of that land of mountains and liberty-by a republic of

faithful hearts, such as Oswald Myconius, Leon Juda, Calvin. Still there is one name which will always be especially associated with the Swiss Reformation-a name which in the annals of Protestantism ranks second only to that of Luther-the name of Ulric Zwingle.

On New Year's Day, 1484, Europe was still on the eve of great events; some of those destined to play important parts in the coming struggle, such as Henry VIII. of England and Charles V. of Austria, were not yet born; Luther, an infant of seven weeks old, lay in his cradle at Eisleben; on that day in a remote Swiss village, high up in the mountains, 2000 feet above the Lake of Zurich, at Wildhaus, a place so named to signify its wild and dreary solitude, Ulric Zwingle, the third son of his parents, was born. His family was of considerable repute in that secluded region; his father was landamman of the commune; his uncle dean of the neighbouring town of Wesen. But reputation in that Swiss valley implied rather the reverence felt for a patriarch, than the more artificial respect paid to an aristocrat. The family of Zwingle were not exempt from, nor superior to the pastoral toils which occupied their less distinguished neighbours, and Ulric, one of a large family, with seven brothers and one sister, grew up accustomed to the labour, and enjoying the pleasures of a mountain boy. It is often found that those who live in a beautiful country are insensible of the privi

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lege they enjoy; it was not so with Zwingle; from his earliest years he loved and admired the mountains among which he lived. So loving, doubtless he derived early strength from that dutiful worship of his mother earth; doubtless it was not without reason that his friend Oswald Myconius said of him in after years, that from that early mountain home, 'from living so near to Heaven, he had caught something of a divine influence.'

But if the little Ulric showed no impatience of his pastoral life, his father soon perceived that the boy was capable of higher things. He took him to Wesen, where, under the fatherlike care of his uncle, the dean, he justified the expectations of his father, and it was determined to send him to Bâle. In a short time he left schoolmaster and schoolfellows behind him, as he had done at Wesen, and in 1497 was removed, being still only thirteen years old, to Berne. At Berne, and at Vienna, where he was sent to study philosophy, he completed his education. In 1502, he returned to his father's house, but as it seems only to discover that he had pledged himself too deeply; had too far sophisticated himself ever again to rest contented with the simple duties and pleasures of a pastoral life; and so, at the age of eighteen, he returned to Bâle, entered himself at the University there, took his degree soon after as Master of Arts, and then deliberately devoted himself to the study of theology.

This study produced upon him much the same effect as it appears to have done upon Luther. Full of human feelings and affections, he could not bring himself to believe that the subtleties so much prized and disputed were of vital consequence to man; of a very strong religious temperament, he found little food for it in the arid theology of the schools; he pronounced the study to be a loss of time. At the critical moment, when he came to this negative conclusion, he received a startling positive confirmation of it in the preaching of one Thomas Wittembach, who declared openly, to the astonished and doubtless shocked youth of Bâle, that the time was at hand for the scholastic theology to be

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abolished, and the ancient doctrine of the Church restored; that the death of Christ was the one only ransom for souls.' Fired by this new doctrine, so accordant with his own previous conviction, Zwingle became, in 1506, curé of Glaris, a place not far from his native village of Wildhaus.

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His first labours were far other than controversial. Quarrelsomeness has always been charged upon the Swiss as the discreditable companion quality of their unquestioned courage. At the beginning of the sixteenth century this disposition seemed to have become chronic in the blood. Every Swiss was a soldier, ready, not to defend his country, but to sell his sword and his courage to the highest bidder. War was the national trade and the national vice. It was as a patriot, no less than as a Christian, that Zwingle deplored this evil: he preached against it; he wrote against it. He used sarcasm and exhortation, poetry and prose. In an allegorical poem called The Labyrinth, he compared the immorality, and especially the indulgence of the ruling passion of the Swiss-their lawless love of warto the fabled Minotaur:' the children of the people were by this monster destroyed both in body and soul where was the Theseus who should deliver his country from so great a calamity? That a reformer was wanted he thus began to feel himself, and allegorically shadowed forth to others. To a Christian minister it would readily occur that the weapons of this new Theseus must not be carnal. There is one cause' so he concludes his poem, leaving the allegory for energetic exhortation- there is one cause of all these misfortunes. No man among us is an imitator of Jesus Christ.' This, then, was Zwingle's first idea of the Reformation: not to match doctrine against doctrine, theory against theory; not to exchange the subtleties of the schoolmen for those of more modern divines; but to oppose morality to immorality, virtue to vice; to confront and put down the besetting sins of his countrymen; and for this end he believed that Christianity was the only means and this

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Christianity, not the rites or doctrines of the Church, but ' an imitation of Jesus Christ.'

But Zwingle's exhortations availed little with his countrymen against their passion for war and the bribes and entreaties of Rome. The war between France and the Papacy was at its height, and the members of the Swiss Confederacy were tempted in 1512 to descend again from their mountains to the plains of Italy to fight the cause of God and the Church. The entire commune of Glaris marched to the war, its landamman and pastor at the head; if Zwingle could not avert the expedition, it only remained for him to accompany it. The result of the campaign was to the Swiss victory a fresh impulse to their warlike propensities; the result to Zwingle was a determination more important, perhaps, to Switzerland and to Europe than the victories of his companions-he resolved to learn Greek.

He had been in Italy; he had looked more closely upon the reality of the Papacy; he had heard the great sin of his countrymen encouraged by those who called themselves the ministers of Christ; he had seen his country's fields abandoned, his countrymen not slain merely, but debased, brutalized, given up to all licence and shamelessness by long habits of mercenary warfare, and this in the name of God and the Church; and the end of it all was that he would learn Greek. importance of this study he himself always estimated as nothing less than vital. When taunted in after years with being a Lutheran, his reply was that he studied Greek before he had heard of Luther.

The

Scarcely less important, perhaps, was the quiet time, those two years during which, at Glaris, and in company with the great Erasmus at Bâle, he pursued his studies. He became well acquainted with and deeply attached to the ancient authors; so much so, that his fondness for them, no less than his love of music, was made matter of reproach to him by some of his religious friends. But those who honour Zwingle, not as a good Protestant, but as a noble man, will find no impiety in his reply to

one of these objections, that 'Plato had surely drank at the divine source.' They will think that, in interchanging his biblical studies with that of Cicero, of Demosthenes, of Thucydides, of Pindar, of Homer, in laying up in his treasure-house things new and old, he imitated the example rather than violated the precepts of his great Master.

There is always something fascinating to the imagination, no less than instructive to the heart, in dwelling upon that season of tranquillity which with so many great men has preceded a life of enterprise-the peaceful seed-time when the harvest of future action has been sown in quiet reflection. This two years' interval in Zwingle's lifeduring which he became acquainted with his dear friend and biographer, the Melancthon of the Swiss Refor mation, Oswald Myconius-was in frequent communication with Erasmus, the man of the most cultivated. intellect of the age-in daily intercourse with the great masters of ancient wisdom,-must have been a period to which he himself often looked back with pleasure. It reminds us of the forty years spent by Oliver Cromwell on the banks of the Ouse, of the convent life of Luther, of the Tarsus retirement of Paul, and of those thirty years at Nazareth where a greater than Zwingle, or Luther, or Paul, lived and worked, and was not known.

In 1515, the French and the Italian troops were again opposed to each other; again the Swiss communes descended to the valley of the Po, to defend the standard which the Church had hallowed. Zwingle was again with them; again he grieved, and now more than formerly, because the arts of the French had sown discord in the ranks of the confederates, and treachery, division, and probable defeat were added to unprofitable and unhallowed warfare. Five days before the battle of Marignan, he preached to an armed audience, exhorting them, not when it was too late to return, but to the practical and most urgent duties of fidelity and union. Again he preached in vain, and the slaughter of the flower of the Swiss youth upon that fatal field was the result of his neglected counsel. In the heat

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