features that best suited the exigencies of the case that they were prompt to lay hold of. Yet Mohammed was not of vigorous intellectuality, nor in any sense an original thinker. The constant repetition of formulas and reiteration of the same ideas that occur throughout the Koran show this. It is extremely probable that his mentality was at times overshadowed either by neurasthenic tendencies, or a predisposition to melancholia, and this was more than likely heightened by a life of excessive mental concentration combined with asceticism. But sincere as he was, Mohammed would not have been a true Arabian, had he not been diplomatic. Thus the commencement of the fourteenth surah is a clever but obvious device on his part; a meeting of his enemies with their own weapons, a flinging back to them of their own words and objections to the truth in their own teeth. It is clear too that here, for the time being, he has resolved on a change of tactics and of front. To prove to them that he is as of old the man to be trusted, he endeavours to disarm their incredulity by his own outspokenness and candour. As the sequel showed, he clearly demonstrates his own perspicacity and knowledge of human nature. He saw that by arguing with his countrymen, by always opposing their doubts with sophistry and argument, would be of little avail--useless, in fact. Such a course would but have encouraged and stimulated their opposition, on the ground that their beliefs, as worth refuting, were also based on truth or at least on strong evidence. Besides, Mohammed was painfully conscious of his own disability and helplessness to convince them by the performance of anything purporting to be miraculous. That on occasions he displayed artfulness and guile--duplicity, in fact--is not to be denied. The invention, e.g., of his night journey from Mecca to heaven viâ Jerusalem, was one of them. When he gave out that Gabriel had revealed to him the conspiracy that had been formed against him, which through ordinary means he had discovered, was another of these pious frauds. But after all, what are these trifles compared with those that in their myriads have been perpetrated by the great Church of Christendom? What are they as compared to a long life of strenuous sincerity, great nobility and earnest effort in the cause of humanity? It is impossible to lose sight of the fact that in working for God, he was all the time raising his countrymen from a lower to a higher level. Besides, the necessity of dissimulation, which is one of the heaviest taxes on a king, and the prerogative of a priest, is one of those idiosyncrasies that human flesh being heir to, even a prophet cannot at times escape from. We are reminded of the phrase: “Qui scit dissimulare, scit regnare”--He is a ruler who can conceal his thoughts--attributed to the Emperor Sigismund by that cultured and ambitious but false and subtle Pontiff Pius II, known as Æneas Sylvius (Pius Æneas): also the identical