ready to obey and endure unto death for the sake of the sovereign whom Allah had placed at their head. Some of them were as full of religious enthusiasm as crusaders, as confident that they were working for God as Cromwell’s Ironsides, and as fanatic as a grossly ignorant army can be which believes itself to be immeasurably superior to the enemy because, on the one hand, it possesses the true faith, while, on the other, the enemy, more learned in the world’s despicable science and philosophy falsely so called, is in the abysmal darkness of unbelief. The support of such men was not to be risked by any nonconformity with the rites which are the outward signs of Islam. Mahomet would have been of all rulers the most blind to his own interest if he had derided their beliefs. But though Mahomet was the leader of a nation containing many fanatics, there is nothing to show that he shared their fanaticism. If he appealed to it, it was because it gave force to his army. He was no more inclined to be a fanatic himself than was Napoleon to be a democrat when he called upon his troops to fulfil their mission of carrying democratic principles to England and other countries assumed to be suffering under despotic rule. In a different age and under different circumstances Mahomet might have been a thoughtful student, or an excellent civil administrator, but it is difficult to conceive that he could ever have been a religious persecutor. He remained all his life a student, desirous of learning, but he was at the same time a man of energy, a successful general, and a good administrator. He was without high ideals of life, but capable of spasmodic kindness, a man not given to sensual pleasures--in his later years at least--sober, intolerant of drunkenness, seeking his pleasure in glory.[536] He appears to me essentially a lonely man; one who took each man’s censure but reserved his judgment; one who, in his own phrase, would pluck out a hair from his beard if he believed that it knew his designs. He was too suspicious and too highly placed to have friends. He was supremely selfish and only considered himself bound to respect his promise when it suited his purpose to do so. Circumstances compelled him to be a soldier, and his great natural abilities made him a successful one, but his ambition, which was spasmodically great--which meditated the conquest of Naples, an expedition against Rome, and other conquests, as stages in his great design of conquering the world[537]--wanted pertinacity and was joined to an emotional, almost a sentimental, nature. He relieved his loneliness and friendlessness by hard work, study, and the companionship of artists and learned men.