It is impossible to conclude this subject of government without mention of the saints. What constitutes a saint no one can tell: they are of both sexes and all ages, of every class and rank, from the madman to the philosopher, from the fanatic to the infidel, and from the mischievous and wicked to the humane and benevolent. I met a man with wool on his head, and a long stave in his hand, chanting forth a ditty at the top of his strained voice. This was a saint, and the soldiers made me move aside, for fear he should make a rush at me. They took the man for a madman; he was none. There was some time ago at Tangier, a female saint, who went about entirely naked: every morning she took from the market-people wood, and laying it in a circle made a fire and seated herself in the middle. There are respectable families where saintship is hereditary: these bury the saints when they die, in their own houses. In these saints are to be found traces at once of the asceticism of early Christianity, which had its birth in Africa, and of those practices which, in the still earlier times of Polytheism, rendered Africa a scandal and wonder to the rest of the world.[232] Since the introduction of Islamism, the superstitions of a country, in early times the most fertile in monsters and chimeras, have been associated with that faith, and have produced that strange veneration of dead saints and sanctification of living fools, which is without parallel elsewhere; and weaving themselves into the religious forms of a people whose civil government is derived from its sacred writings, the distinction between the doctrines of the one, and revolutions of the other is effaced, and thus do we find the names of dynasties derived from the denomination of sects. All the great dynasties, save one, have begun with saints or preachers. Fez and Morocco were built by followers of teachers who settled around their cells to listen to their words, and share in the repose that resulted, if not from the justice they administered, at least from the respect which they inspired. They died, as they had lived, teachers and preachers. On the son of the one--on the posthumous child of the other--the surviving gratitude of the people bestowed the title and authority of prince. The title of the present emperor is merely the designation of an officer of the law. That character alone should give to a man control over the multitude and authority over the monarch--make his house a sanctuary for the malefactor, and himself a guarantee of safety to a caravan, is a wonderful thing. Their religious establishment has served to repair wrongs and to avert calamities, and even at the present moment it mitigates rudeness and restrains power.