rpose, begun anew. Poor human
nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession
of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has
to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears,
repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again
still onwards. That his struggle _be_ a faithful unconquerable one:
that is the question of questions. We will put-up with many sad
details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never
teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate Mahomet's faults even as
faults: but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling there. We
will leave all this behind us; and assuring ourselves that he did mean
some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be.

* * * * *

These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people.
Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race.
Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating
with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is
greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees,
frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty,
silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You
are all alone there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun
blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep
Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed,
deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and
yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians
are called the French of the East, we will call the Arabs Oriental
Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and
of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness,
of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one
having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will
slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for
three days, will set him fairly on his way;--and then, by another law
as sacred, kill him if he can. In words too, as in action. They are
not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when
they do speak. An earnest truthful kind of men. They are, as we know,
of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the
Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not
Jewi