en years of age when he accompanied
the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language
must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life
or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world,
the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion
and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in
his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the
tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some
useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of
hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian,
and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the
composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but
solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes
the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was
addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in
the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of
fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind
of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of _Islam_, he preached
to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a
necessary fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the
apostle of God.

It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned nations
of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple
ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true
God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with
the standard of _human_ virtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly
expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets is an
evidence of his power: the unity of his name is inscribed on the first
table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible
image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the
faith of the Hebrew exiles was