in the formation and development of society. Its prior existence is demonstrated by the vestiges of communal marriage to be traced to-day in remote portions of the Peninsula, and in the well authenticated tradition that female kinship was originally the rule in the Desert, the child belonging to the tribe and following the fortunes of the mother. Among the Bedouins, the only recognized methods of obtaining a wife were those of capture and purchase. The former was thoroughly congenial with the warlike instincts of a race whose possessions acquired an especial value as the result of martial prowess; the latter represented an indemnity for the possible loss of sons who, under other circumstances, would have become warriors of the maternal tribe. There was, however, no real difference between the lot of the bride who, as the prize of victory, was dragged shrieking from the folds of her tent, and that of the smiling victim whose beauty had been bartered for a hundred camels. Both were regarded as chattels, and descended with other personal property to the heir. As the population increased, and the means of livelihood became more difficult to procure, the appearance of a female child was looked upon as a calamity; infanticide grew common; and nothing but the hope of being able, at some future day, to add to his herd the camels of some prospective suitor, ever reconciled the mercenary Bedouin to the birth of a daughter. The attainment to a high degree of civilization with all its demoralizing influence was not able to destroy the native politeness, the air of conscious dignity, the noble hospitality, and the courtly graces of manner which distinguished the fierce and untaught tribesman of the Desert. His sense of independence was not hampered by invidious distinctions of rank or inconvenient regulations of property. His intuitive knowledge of human nature, his rare susceptibility to every impression which can improve and develop the mind, his capacity to deal with the most difficult questions of policy, his willingness to encounter the most appalling dangers, were qualities which insured his success in the most distant countries and under the most adverse and discouraging conditions. Despite his readiness to profit by the superior knowledge of his adversaries, he entertained the most extravagant ideas of his own importance, and looked down upon all who were of different manners, religious faith, or nationality. His inordinate family pride preserved for the astonishment of subsequent generations the endless nomenclature of his progenitors; and, at the birth of Mohammed, the most obscure and poverty-stricken individual could name, with a fluency born of long practice and traditional inheritance, his ancestors for six hundred years. His language, wonderfully complex but flexible, offering to the purposes of the poet and the orator--by reason of its prodigal richness and inexhaustible variety--every resource of sentiment, pathos, and eloquence, yet so