hich their
swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility;
and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of
anarchy and warfare.

But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed
by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the
friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds
of knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the
desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is
derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
the Chaldaean tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects; but each, after their own, allowed a just preference
to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as
in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of
manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand
of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to
the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites
were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic
letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the
banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by
a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn
eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy
luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, and their more elaborate
compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by
the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was
prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying
the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and
husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had now
appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice
to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted
to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first
Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and
harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed i