unhumbled heart.’ ‘What! would you have me believe,’ said he, ‘as a child?’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘True,’ said he, ‘I think that is the only way.’ Aga Ali said no more but ‘Certainly he is a good man!’” “Aga Neeser came, and talked most captiously and irrelevantly against all revealed religion. Three years ago, he had thrown off the shackles of Mohammed, and advised me to do the same with my yoke. I told him, that I preferred my yoke to his freedom. He was for sending me naked into a wilderness; but I would rather be a child under the restraints of a parent, who would provide me with food and clothing, and be my protector and guide. To every thing I said, he had but one answer. ‘God is the sole agent; sin and holiness, happiness and misery, cause and effect, are all perfectly one.’ Finding him determined to amuse himself in this way, I said, ‘These things will do very well for the present, while reclining in gardens and smoking pipes; but not for a dying hour. How many years of life remain? You are about thirty, perhaps thirty more remain. How swiftly have the last thirty passed: how soon will the next thirty be gone: and then we shall see. If you are right, I lose nothing; if I am right, you lose your soul. Leaving out the consideration of all religion, it is probable that the next world may be akin to this, and our relation to both not dissimilar. But here we see that childhood is a preparation for manhood, and that neglect of the proper employments of childhood entails miseries in riper years.’ The thought of death, and of separation from his pleasures, made him serious; or perhaps he thought it useless to press me with any more of his opinions.” Such was the state of the minds of the people whom he hoped to bring to a reception of the gospel, to renounce Mohammed, and “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!” We may learn more of the nature of their religion, by his account of the manner in which their principal fast is observed. It is called the fast of Ramazan, and is directed by the Koran to be kept during the month called by that name.