tively limited, and resembling closely in their commercial conditions the roads of the United States, the German railways have been constructed, in general, on principles analogous to those which have been found to answer so well in America. The vast expenditure for earth-work and costly works of art, such as viaducts, bridges, and tunnels, by which valley are bestridden and mountains pierced to gain a straight and level line in the English system, have not been attempted; and the railways have been carried more nearly along the natural level of the country, the cost of earth-work having been generally limited to that | of short cuttings and low embankments. Curves lation which railways and railway capital Comparative View of the Movement of Traffic on a Portion of the Railways in operation in the United "In making such a comparison it is especially utility and value. Such a line of communication necessary to consider not merely the length of as that which connects, or lately connected, Portsrailway reported to be in operation or in progress, mouth (Virginia) with Weldon (North Carolina), but the capital which has been invested in its and that which connects London and Birmingham construction; for two lines of communication re- both receive the common name of railway, nearly ceiving the common denomination of railways in the same manner as a log-cabin of a Missouri may differ from each other extremely in their settler and the palace of Blenheim receive the * The average cost of all the remaining lines was about £8,000 per mile. VOL. XXI. NO. I. 8 1 common denomination of "dwelling-house." The | wished. I have, however, collected in a table as most exact measure of the relative utility or efficiency of two lines of railway is their cost. It is not, however, to be forgotten that, even in adopting this test, regard must be had to the relative cost of land, material, and manual labor. "It would have been desirable to have exhibited a comparative view of the average movement of the traffic upon the railways in operation in different countries at a corresponding epoch. Unfortunately we have no documents to enable us to do this with all the precision which might be many data as are supplied by authentic documents for nearly corresponding epochs. The railways on which the traffic reported has been carried do not in general include all the lines open in the respective countries; nevertheless, they will afford some approximation to a comparison of the extent of intercommunication by railway. In some cases also I have been obliged to obtain the numerical results by estimation. These I have indicated in the table." From the New Monthly Magazine. WALLACE AND FAWDON. BY LEIGH HUNT. [THIS Dallad was suggested by one of the notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel. Wallace, the great Scottish patriot, had been defeated in a sharp encounter with the English. He was forced to retreat with only sixteen followers; the English pursued him with a bloodhound; and his sole chance of escape from that tremendous investigator was either in baffling the scent altogether (which was impossible, unless fugitives could take to the water, and continue there for some distance), or in confusing it by the spilling of blood. For the latter purpose a captive was sometimes sacrificed; in which case the hound stopped upon the body. Never The supernatural part of the story of Fawdon is treated by its first relater, Harry the Minstrel, as a mere legend, and that not a very credible one; but as a mere legend it is very fine, and quite sufficient for poetical purposes; nor should the old poet's philosophy have thought proper to gainsay it. theless, as the mysteries of the conscience are more awful things than any merely gratuitous terror (besides leaving optical phenomena quite as real as the latter may find them), even the supernatural part of the story becomes probable when we consider the agitations which the noble mind of Wallace may have undergone during such trying physical circumstances, and such extremes of moral responsibility. It seems clear, that however necessary the death of Fawdon may have been to his companjons or to Scotland, his slayer regretted it; I have suggested the kind of reason which he would most likely have had for the regret; and upon the whole, it is my opinion, that Wallace actually saw the visions, and that the legend originated in the fact. I do not mean to imply that Fawdon became present, embodied or disembodied, whatever may have been the case with his spectre. I only say that what the legend reports Wallace to have seen, was actually in the hero's eyes. The remainder of the question I leave to the pyschologist.] Part the First. WALLACE with his sixteen men The bloodhound's bay comes down the wind, Right upon the road; Town and tower are yet to pass, Wallace neither turn'd nor spake, Closer drew the men; But most went cursing then. From the North British Review. MAHOMET AND THE KORAN. Life of Mahomet. By WASHINGTON IRVING. London: Murray, 1850. The Arabic writers that tell us these facts, give us an account also of the pedigree and previous history of Mahomet. The prophet, they say, was not an Arab of the genuine or pure race, the posterity of Kahtan or Joktan, the son of Heber, by whom, after the annihilation of the wicked aboriginal tribes of Ad, Thamud, &c., the Arabian Peninsula had been re-colonized; he was an Arab of the mixed or Ishmaelitish stock, that had been introduced into the peninsula, and particularly into that western portion of it called Hejaz, by the marriage of Ishmael, the outcast son of Abraham, with a daughter of the house of Joktan. The distinction, however, between these two kinds of Arabs was one rather of tradition than reality, the Ishmaelitish and the native Arabs living in a state of interfusion, and pursuing exactly the same occupations -some settled in towns scattered at intervals over the Peninsula, but the greater proportion roaming over the desert spaces of the interior with their flocks and camels In the year 613, the inhabitants of Mecca, was spoken of but the divine mission of Maa considerable walled town, situated in a bar-homet Ibn Abdallah. ren stony valley, about fifty miles from the eastern shore of the Red Sea, were thrown into a state of no small excitement, by learning that they had a prophet among them, a man professing to have a commission from God to teach them, and all the other Arabs, a new way of life. There was no doubt about the fact. Already, for three years or more, there had been whisperings in the town that something strange had befallen Mahomet Ibn Abdallah, and his wife Kadijah; and now the secret was out. Mahomet himself had revealed it. At a meeting of his kinsmen, after having feasted them with lamb's flesh and milk, he had openly asserted what he had till then told only to a few, and announced himself as a messenger of God, sent to reform the faith of the Arabs. "Children of Abd-al-Motalleb," he had said to them, "I do not believe that there is any man in Arabia that can make you a better present than that I now bring to you; for I offer you the good both of this life and of the life that is to come. Know that the great God has commanded me to call you unto him." For some time the kinsmen had kept silence, not knowing what to say; but at last Mahomet's young cousin, Ali, a boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age, had sprung up and said, "Come, my cousin, I will be with you; I will be your vizier in Mecca." And Mahomet had embraced the boy before all the kinsmen, and had said, "Verily, this is my brother, and ny vizier over you; see, then, that ye pay him reverence. And at this the kinsmen had laughed heartily, turning to Abu Thaleb, the father of Ali, who was present, and saying, "Hearest thou this, Abu Thaleb, that henceforth thou must render obedience to thine own son ?" And all these things, and many more, had been spread abroad in Mecca and its neighborhood, so that, both in and around the town, nothing In the course of the general distribution of the Arabian Peninsula among the multitudinous tribes, whether pure or Ishmaelitish, that divided the possesssion of it, that part of the province of Hejaz in which the town of Mecca was included, had fallen to the tribe of the Koreishites, who traced their existence to Koreish, one of the descendants of Ishmael. By the acquisition of this territory, the men of Koreish found themselves raised to a position of pre-eminence among the other Arab tribes; for Mecca was a spot holy in the imagination of all the Arabians, on account of its legendary associations. In this waterless and dreary valley, said the native tradition, had Adam and Eve first met again after their expulsion from Paradise, and long wanderings over the earth, in search of each other; here had these parents of our race first worshiped God in their new wretchedness; here had ! their son Seth built the famous Kaaba, or square-stone shrine, for which heaven itself had furnished the model; here also it was that the outcast Hagar and her son had sat down to die, when the angel appeared, and showed them the waters of the well Zem-zem bubbling up to refresh them; and here, finally, had the mighty Ishmael, assisted by his aged father, after their reconciliation, restored the work of Seth, which the flood had swept away, building into one of its walls, by the direction of the angel Gabriel, the sacred black stone that had been seen to fall from the open sky. Centuries, therefore, before the Christian era, Mecca was the Kebla of Arabia-the fixed point toward which, as toward the holiest spot known, all devout Arabs, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, from the Red to the Persian Sea, were taught to turn when they prayed. Whatever diversities of creed or worship distinguished the different tribes of the great Peninsula, in this one feeling, at least, of reverence for the Kaaba, and for the city Mecca as the seat of it, all were agreed. It was to this, its religious reputation, that Mecca owed its prosperity. Pilgrims traveling thither periodically from all parts of Arabia, in order that they might walk in procession round the Kaaba, and kiss the black stone in its eastern wall, were accustomed to bring their merchandise with them; and the Meccans, who but for this concourse of people to their little territory, would have been among the poorest of all the Arabians, became rich by the consequent traffic. Little wonder, then, that the Koreishites, as the masters of Mecca, and the hereditary keepers of the Kaaba, were accounted illustrious among the Arab tribes; or that their particular dialect of the general Arabic spoken by all, was considered the finest, the richest, and the most classic. Not only did the Prophet belong to the tribe of Koreish, he belonged also to the most important branch of that tribe-the family of the Haschemites. His grandfather, Abd-al-Motalleb, the head of this family, was by that fact the first man in Mecca-the chief in civil authority, the most active in business, and the recognized guardian of the Kaaba. Dying in extreme old age, this man left a large family of descendants-children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Out of all these, his favorite is said to have been his grandson Mahomet, the only and orphan child of his deceased son Abdallah. Born in 571, Mahomet was but seven years old at the time of his grandfather's death; after which he fell to the charge of his nu merous uncles, and particularly to that of Abu Thaleb, the eldest son of Abd al-Motalleb, and his successor in the government of Mecca. The youth and the early manhood of the Prophet were accordingly spent either at Mecca, in the household of Abu Thaleb, or in such casual expeditions for war, plunder, or trade, as were undertaken by any of the uncles. His sole patrimony, independently of what he earned in the service of Abu Thaleb, consisted of five camels, a few sheep, and a black female slave. As an Arab of undoubted pedigree, Mahomet must have inherited, in high measure, the peculiar intellectual and moral qualities that distinguish at this hour, as they have always distinguished, the men of the Shemitic race. "The Shemite," says Mr. Layard, "possesses in the highest degree what we call imagination. The poor and ignorant Arab, whether of the desert or town, moulds with clay the jars for his daily wants, in a form which may be traced in the most elegant vases of Greece or Rome; and, what is no less remarkable, identical with that represented on monuments raised by his ancestors 3000 years before. If he speaks, he shows a ready eloquence; his words are glowing and apposite; his descriptions true, yet brilliant; his similes just, yet most fanciful. These high qualities seem to be innate in him; he takes no pains to cultivate or improve them; he knows nothing of reducing them to any rule, or measuring them by any standard." More particularly, the characteristics of the Shemitic mind, whether as seen in the Arab, the Hebrew, or the Syrian type, seem to be these-extreme facility and spontaneity in operation, and comparative independence, as regards the symmetry of the result, on training or culture; a prevailing seriousness, or even ferocity of mood, and, connected with this, a deficiency in at least the Teutonic form of humor; and, above all, a deep and fervid faith in the supernatural, and a strong aptitude for religious emotion. All these qualities of his race must have existed in Mahomet in a high degree; and, if there were any minor peculiarities of temperament likely to arise from the grafting of a Hebrew shoot on an Arabic stock, these, also, we may suppose, were illustrated in him. |