of his prayers. The erratic genius of the Berber, impressed with an exhibition so congenial with its nature and actuated by the love of novelty, soon recognized in the holy man a guide whose inspiration was directly derived from heaven. Among the first of his disciples was a youth of distinguished lineage and unusual personal attractions, named Abd-al-Mumen, whom the Mahdi, as he was now universally called, selected as his councillor, and whose talents for war and executive ability, as soon became evident, were superior to those of any individual of his time. Accompanied by a small band of followers, the Mahdi advanced by easy stages to Morocco, the depravity of whose citizens he constantly represented as worthy of the severest punishment that could be inflicted by the wrath of an outraged Deity. It was not without reason that he denounced the vices of the great Almoravide capital. Although so recently founded, it already ranked with the most opulent, the most splendid, the most dissolute of the cities of the Mohammedan world. Its population had been gathered from three continents; its commerce extended from the frozen zone to countries far south of the equator; its profligate diversions equalled in their shamelessness and monstrous variety the proverbial abominations of ancient Carthage. The first public act of the Mahdi after his arrival was one whose unparalleled audacity was admirably calculated to establish the sacredness of his pretended mission as far as the most distant frontiers of the empire. On one of the Fridays of the festival of Ramadhan, a great concourse had assembled in the principal mosque of the capital to await the coming of the Sultan. Before the royal cortége appeared, an emaciated figure, meanly clad and intoning in deep and solemn accents verses from the Koran, strode through the assemblage and seated itself, without ceremony, on the throne. The remonstrances of the attendants of the mosque produced no effect on the intruder, and even at the approach of Ali himself he retained his seat, while the entire congregation rose and stood reverently in the presence of their monarch. In the minds of devout Moslems, mental eccentricity and insanity are not infrequently considered evidences of divine inspiration; the most outrageous denunciations are received with humility by the greatest potentates; and, encouraged by impunity, the dervish and the santon, sure of the toleration of the sovereign and the applause of the multitude, do not hesitate to violate every feeling of decency and reverence in the prosecution of their schemes of imposture. The existence of this superstitious prejudice prevented the molestation of the Mahdi, whose reputation had preceded him, but whose person was as yet unknown to the inhabitants of Morocco. Not content with usurping his place, the audacious reformer even ventured, in scathing terms, to reprove the Sultan in the presence of the assembly, and warned him