heir secret doctrines are confined to the elect
who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most
indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the
Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood. The little that is, or
deserves to be, known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr,
(Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354-357,) and the second volume of the recent and
instructive Travels of M. de Volney. * Note: The religion of the Druses
has, within the present year, been fully developed from their own
writings, which have long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and
Oxford, in the "Expose de la Religion des Druses, by M. Silvestre de
Sacy." Deux tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life
of Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors in the
account of Gibbon. These errors chiefly arose from his want of knowledge
or of attention to the chronology of Hakem's life. Hakem succeeded to
the throne of Egypt in the year of the Hegira 386. He did not assume
his divinity till 408. His life was indeed "a wild mixture of vice and
folly," to which may be added, of the most sanguinary cruelty. During
his reign, 18,000 persons were victims of his ferocity. Yet such is the
god, observes M. de Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years!
(See p. ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were
interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric meaning,
alluding to the destruction of other religions and the propagation
of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which
induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new
faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian
religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary
part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his
Intelligence. It was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated
the Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he
displayed in the earlier years of his reign. His barbarous persecution,
and the burning of the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, belong
entirely to that period; and his assumption of divinity was followed
by an edict of toleration to Jews and Christians. The Mahometans, whose
religion he then treated with hostility and contempt, being far the most
numerous, were his most dangerous enemies, and therefore the objects of
his most inveterate hatred. It is anot