the attendants of the mosque, are permitted to enter. This holy sanctuary once served, as the temple of Delphi did among the Greeks, as the public treasury of the nation. Here the money, jewels, and other precious articles of the people of the Hejaz were kept in chests, or suspended on silken ropes. Among these was a copy of the Koran in Kufic characters; a brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls, which was suspended directly over the prophet’s tomb; with all sorts of vessels set with jewels, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and other ornaments, sent as presents from all parts of the empire. Most of these articles were carried away by the Wahabees when they sacked and plundered the sacred cities. On the 21st of April, 1815, Burckhardt quitted Medina with a small caravan bound for Yembo, on the seacoast. His mind was still exceedingly depressed by the weak state of his body; and his gayety and animal spirits, with the energy which accompanies them in ardent minds, having deserted him, the world assumed in his eyes a sombre aspect, which rendered travelling and every other pleasure insipid. All he now sighed for was rest. This mental condition seems strongly to have affected even his opinions. His views both of men and things became cynical. Vice seemed to have spread like a deluge over the eastern world, leaving no single spot whereon Virtue might rest the sole of her foot. “For my own part,” says he, “_a long residence_ among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians _justifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice_; that they have _little true piety_, and _still less charity or forbearance_; and that _honesty_ is only to be found in their _paupers or idiots_.” His mind was certainly labouring under the effects of his Medina fever when he wrote this passage, and it would therefore be lost labour to analyze or confute it minutely. That people who are “wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice” should be destitute of honesty, is no more to be wondered at than that a black camel should not be half-white; but if “true piety” be, as most moralists will admit, to be numbered among the virtues, then the orientals are not, as Mr. Burckhardt asserts, “_wholly_ deficient in virtue,” &c., since he allows that they have some, though but little, “true piety.” Again, either the majority of the orientals are rich, or the majority of them are honest; for if the majority of them are poor, or paupers, then the majority of them are honest; for honesty, we are told, is only to be found among paupers and idiots. It would be easy to expose and refute our traveller’s assertion by the direct testimony of persons still more competent than he to decide on such points; but his opinion is palpably absurd, like most others formed by sick or gloomy individuals, since no society could subsist if formed entirely of vicious members. Had Burckhardt himself lived to see his works through the press, such passages as the above