ot say that his
religion made him _worse_; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous
things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he
answers is, in his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to
that of Christians, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed
be the name of the Lord." He answered in like manner of Seid, his
emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had
fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the
Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work,
Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's
daughter found him weeping over the body;--the old gray-haired man
melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she.--"You see a friend weeping
over his friend."--He went out for the last time into the mosque, two
days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own
back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me
three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to
be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the Day of
Judgment."--You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that
kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible
through twelve centuries,--the veritable Son of our common Mother.

Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough
self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is
not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much
upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own
clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors,
what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, "the
respect due unto thee." In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel
things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural
pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no
boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each
called for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity,
if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The War
of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them,
to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest,
and so forth; he can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a
day. What will become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot