lves enjoyed the leisure of a
thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on the
other hand, what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists? Every
where it has passed for a lawful postulate, that the Saracen conquests
prevailed, half by the feebleness of the Roman government at
Constantinople, and half by the preternatural energy infused into the
Arabs by their false prophet and legislator. In either of its faces,
this theory is falsified by a steady review of facts. With regard to the
Saracens, Mr Finlay thinks as we do, and argues that they prevailed
through the _local_, or sometimes the _casual_, weakness of their
immediate enemies, and rarely through any strength of their own. We must
remember one fatal weakness of the Imperial administration in those
days, not due to men or to principles, but entirely to nature and the
slow growth of scientific improvements--viz. the difficulties of
locomotion. As respected Syria, Egypt, Cyrenaica, and so on to the most
western provinces of Africa, the Saracens had advantages for moving
rapidly which the Caesar had not. But is not a water movement speedier
than a land movement, which for an army never has much exceeded fourteen
miles a-day? Certainly it is; but in this case there were two desperate
defects in the Imperial control over that water service. To use a fleet,
you must have a fleet; but their whole naval interest had been starved
by the intolerable costs of the Persian war. Immense had been the
expenses of Heraclius, and annually decaying had been his Asiatic
revenues. Secondly, the original position of the Arabs had been better
than that of the emperor, in every stage of the warfare which so
suddenly arose. In Arabia they stood nearest to Syria, in Syria nearest
to Egypt, in Egypt nearest to Cyrenaica. What reason had there been for
expecting a martial legislator at that moment in Arabia, who should fuse
and sternly combine her distracted tribes? What blame, therefore, to
Heraclius, that Syria--the first object of assault, being also by much
the weakest part of the empire, and immediately after the close of a
desolating war--should in four campaigns be found indefensible? We must
remember the unexampled abruptness of the Arabian revolution. The year
622, by its very name of Hegira, does not record a triumph but a
humiliation. In that year, therefore, and at the very moment when
Heraclius was entering upon his long Persian struggle, Mahomet was yet