Less than one hundred and twenty years intervened between the vagabondage and ignorance of the Desert and the stability and intellectual culture of the great Abbaside and Ommeyade capitals. The career of the Arab was too rapid to be permanent. In four generations it had covered the ground ordinarily traversed in twenty. Its delusive splendor concealed the decay which was coincident with the era of its greatest prosperity. The same causes which facilitated the foundation and advancement of his power and culture were active during their decline, and contributed to their ultimate destruction. The statement may appear paradoxical, in view of the acknowledged influence of mercantile associations upon the faculties of the human mind; but a certain degree of isolation seems to be necessary, at least in tropical and semi-tropical regions, for the complete development of the arts of civilization; and these arts have usually attained their highest perfection among nations which inhabit peninsulas. Egypt and China, whose reliance was entirely upon their own resources, were the most exclusive of nations in the ancient world, as were Mexico and Peru in the modern. The vast majority of the populations of India, Japan, and Spain had but little intercourse with those outside their boundaries, which were defended by stormy and mysterious seas. In no other countries have the powers of the human intellect, in the creation of all that is grand and imposing, of all that is beautiful, of all that is artistic, of all that contributes to the benefit, the cultivation, and the material improvement of mankind, been manifested as in Greece and Italy. And Arabia, although denied by Nature the advantages of soil and climate enjoyed by more favored lands, yet possessed what, in the crisis of her fate, rendered her superior to all her adversaries,--a race of bold and hardy warriors inured to hardship by the privations of an abstemious life, and by habit and inclination capable of the most arduous and desperate enterprises. Their experience with the surrounding effeminate nations had taught them not only the weakness of the latter, but also how their coveted wealth might be obtained; and at a propitious moment, under the guidance of an impassioned enthusiast, a horde of outlaws, driven from their homes by their scandalized neighbors, became the nucleus of victorious armies the fame of whose gallantry filled the world. And yet, while glorying in the deeds of martial heroism which insured the establishment and maintenance of her Prophet’s faith, she was conscious of the instability of an empire sustained by arms alone, and labored to raise upon more substantial and enduring foundations the splendid fabric of her greatness. The same fervid impulse which prompted and carried to a successful issue the conquest or extermination of those designated by the comprehensive term of infidel was able to adapt itself with singular facility to all the conditions of peace, and to enable the