1830.] Mr. URBAN, Assassination of Henry IV. of France. Paris, Jan. 1. HAVE the pleasure of transmitting to you a sketch of the house, in the front of which Henri Quatre was assassinated, and which is both curious in itself, and interesting with regard to the event of the King's death. I have also added a slight account of the particulars of the fatal occurrence, extracted from L'Etoile and other writers of the period, which may serve to illus trate the drawing. It is remarkable that the day on which Henri Quatre was murdered, had already been predicted as one which was likely to prove fatal to him; this circumstance may, however, like many other prophecies, have been the cause of its accomplishment, particularly as it was generally imagined to have been the result of a regularly or ganized and long arranged conspiracy. There are many things which tend to support this belief, though in his dying moments the murderer Ravaillac most strenuously denied having been instigated by any one. Both L'Etoile and Mathieu take notice of the day being considered an ominous one, and other writers beside make particular mention of the King's restlessness and uneasiness on that day, and the night preceding. He seemed himself to have been apprehensive of some approaching calamity, and appeared like the Highland Seer, to feel that " coming events cast their shadows before." The Queen 100, like Calphurnia in her entreaty to Cæsar, earnestly besought him not to leave his palace; but, as courageous as the Roman, he laughed to scorn the thought of danger, and dismissing even his usual retinue of Guards, he set out for the Arsenal, to visit the Duc de Sully, at that time sick, accompanied only by the six noblemen who were in constant attendance upon his person. "The carriage having reached the end of the Rue St. Honoré, and on the point of entering that of La Ferroperie, which is there exceedingly narrow, and still more confined by the shops which are built up against the wall of the Cemetière des Innocens, was impeded by encountering on the right hand side a cart laden with wine, and on the left a wain of hay, and was therefore obliged to stop at the corner of the street, opposite the office of a notary named Poutrain. The footmen 9 cemetery, in order to pass easier along, and rejoin it at the end of the street, leaving only two of their number behind, one of whom went forward to clear the way, and the other took this opportunity of tying up his garter. Ravaillac, who had followed the carriage all the way from the Louvre, seeing that it was stopped, and that no one remained near to guard it, advanced on the side where he had observed that the King was sitting, his cloak hanging on his left shoulders to conceal the knife which he held in his hand. He glided between the shops and the carriage, as did all those who wished to pass it, and stepping with one foot on a spoke of one of the wheels, and supporting himself with the other on a boundary stone, he drew his knife, which was doubleedged, and struck a blow at the King, which penetrated his side a little above the heart, between the third and fourth ribs, at the moment when the Prince had turned towards the Duc d'Epernon, reading a letter; or according to others, as he was leaning towards the Mareschal de Lavardin, to whom he was whispering something in his ear. Feeling himself stabbed, Henry cried out I am wounded,' and at the same instant the assassin perceiving that the point of the knife had been turned by the bone of a rib, redoubled his blow with such quickness that none of those who v were in the carriage had time to prevent, or even to perceive it. Henry in raising his arm, gave additional force to the second blow, which pierced him; to the heart, according to Perefixe and l'Etoile, and according to Regniault and the Mercure Français, near the auricle of the heart, in the veinecave,' which was cut. A quantity of blood rushed from the mouth and from the wound of the unfortunate Prince, and he expired uttering only a deep sigh; or, as Mathieu says, exclaiming in a faint voice these few words, It is nothing.' The murderer attempted a third blow, but it was caught on the sleeve of the Duc d'Epernon." See L'Etoile, Perefixe, Mathieu, Regniault, and the Memoirs of the Duc de Sully. Yours, &c. DUDLEY COSTELLO. Mr. URBAN, Jan. 6. in rear of the carriage went into the which we see afflict mankind call GENT. MAG. January, 1830. 10 Mr. Upham's Reply to forth the sympathy of the feeling heart, how much deeper should be the sentiment, when the stake is for such higher interests as the will of God and a future life present. Whoever ventures, either from a perverted will, or an unhappy course of thought, to put forth sentiments interfering with all that can sustain the soul in affliction, and carry it triumphantly over death, must excite the pity, and call forth the earnest counteracting effort, of every lover of his fellow man. Grave as these thoughts appear, they are called forth by a recent publication, which, even in this age of the march of intellect, has taken a stride beyond all the monsters of Swift's prolific imagination; "The Apology for Mohammed the Illustrious! by Mr. Higgins," cannot fail to excite wonder in all who have ever read the Ottoman Annals, or who know their own Scriptures. To those who have read either, the present publication may be safely committed without danger; but human intellect is now so advancing, that no one will blame a short succinct glance at some of the most extraordinary and self-confuted assertions with which the whole work abounds. Far from meaning any offence to Mr. Higgins, no one esteems him more sincerely than myself, as far as the amenities of life may be safely carried; for, as concerns man to man, I believe he desires sincerely to do them service. Put him in charge of the roads, to take care of the affairs of an hospital, he will spend hours and days to set matters right, regardless of all personal trouble; and if Mr. Higgins would let the world know no more of him than in these and similar actions, he would deserve and receive the gratitude of hundreds. Indignant as every true lover of the Christian faith must feel at so unnecessary an attack as that levelled by Mr. Higgins, I scarcely think I should have taken up my pen, had he not chosen to inscribe his objectionable work to the Royal Asiatic Society, every member of which, I doubt not, will consider, as well as myself, that Mr. Higgins has taken a most unusual and unjustifiable liberty by so doing. I for one beg leave to disclaim any kind of approval or participation with a single statement in the pamphlet :— in fact, I know it to be full of errors, and that if the parts are substracted which are not reasonings, but Mr. Higgins's glosses upon the practices of Christians and Mussulmen, matters of no relevancy as argument, the facts on which he grounds his assertions can be easily proved to be mistakes and misconceptions; in fact every statement, which the pages of Mr. Higgins's extraordinary pamphlet contains, may be readily confuted. Throughout the whole extent of the observations upon the life, mission, and actions of Muhammed, contained in the lengthy passages from p. 1 to p. 42, not one tangible point is adduced which serves to prove a single fact. All is upon supposititious grounds, and all deals in generalities, which make nothing either for or against the Impostor. He was gifted with a graceful person; he was faithful to Cadijah his first wife, for the twenty-two years of their union; he was affable and kind to his followers and friends. Granted that all these things are true, it is equally true, that giving the full sway to his unbridled lust the same person afterwards penned express chapters for the Koran, to frame an excuse for indulging his own boundless sensuality, allowing to himself an unlimited number of women, and declaring that it was a propensity which he could not controul; he further prevailed upon his freedman and adopted son Zaid, to repudiate his wife the beautiful Zunat, whom Muhammed then took to his bed, a step considered incestuous, and which gave offence to many of his followers. Having ascertained the extent of his influence over the mind of his followers, what shall we say to the humanity which made the sword the instrument of conversion, and which spread the flames of war and bloodshed over the whole East; rendering it imperative on his followers to convert by the sword every surrounding state; whereby Arabia, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Armenia, and in fact the whole East, became one scene of blood and devastation! To incite his deluded followers to these enterprizes, he declares in the 3d chapter of the Koran, section viii. that whoever falls in battle their sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment their wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; the loss of his limbs shall be replaced by the wings of angels and of cherubim !" Finding Arabia peopled with nu 1830.1 Life and Opinions of Muhammed. merous tribes of Jews who fled thither for refuge from the disordered provinces of the Roman and Persian monarchies, Muhammed vainly endeavoured to make them exchange their faith for his Koran, and finding his efforts ineffectual, he actually continued a inerciless persecution of the whole race, until he had extirpated them from Arabia. This cruel and revengeful conduct was properly rewarded by a retributive retaliation, Tainax, a Jewess, being the instru ment of his sufferings and death, by the administration of poison, in revenge for her murdered relatives. Such are a few only of the leading traits of Muhammed's life; and how any person, having before him the consequences of this doctrine and institutions, can possibly set himself down to pen an apology for his character, might well excite astonishment, if we had not daily examples of the perversion of the human understanding, and its morbid and diseased propensities. If we analyze the Koran, it must be manifest to every one acquainted with its tenets, that its sublimest ideas are derived from the language of our Scriptures; that its doctrines are a compound of Judaism and Christianity; of selections from Talmudic Legends, Apocryphal Gospels, and fragments of Oriental tradition and doctrines. Nothing can be so apparent as this fact, if we compare it with the Mishcàl-alMasa"bíh, or traditions of the Prophet's private life, actions, and sayings, supplied from the recollections of Ayesha and his other wives; which vicious and extraordinary work is in fact made the basis of Islamism; as it is held in the greatest respect by the whole class of Mussulmans of the sect of the Sunnites, that is, nearly the whole Muhammedan world. Now by accepting of these sayings and actions as the basis of their civil regulations, and not as supposed from the Koran, they evidence the superiority which they attach to Muhammed's actions over his doctrine; and a more scandalous, profligate display of habits can scarcely be perused than in this extraordinary compilation. Properly to appreciate the opinions of Mahomet, which arise from these traditions being followed as matters of faith, we must trace them in their devastating progress over the whole 11 East, over the vast plains of Tartary, China, and almost the whole of the known world; and when we reflect upon the vast and populous regions which their baneful influence has reduced to deserts, we may derive the most striking evidence of the misery caused by this artful and unprincipled man. Muhammed never pretended to work miracles for conversion, although he evidently laid claim to them as means, witness his night journey, and the attendance of the angel Gabriel. When, however, he was required by his enemies to show a proof of his mission by working a miracle, he, knowing his own impotency over the powers of nature, artfully eluded the question, by saying, that as the miracles of Jesus had not worked conversion, so he was not commissioned to use them; an evidence from his own mouth of the divine mission of our Saviour, and of the imposture practised by himself. Nothing can be more contrary to fact, than the assertion so boldly made by Mr. Higgins at page 29, that each Mussulman for his own person is invested with the character of a priest, and that the Muhammedan religion is destitute of priesthood; Islamism has its priesthood. The Sultan is pontiff, legislator, and judge, as successor to the Caliphs; he is styled the Sultandin or the protector of the faith; the Padishahislam or the Emperor of Islamism; and Til-ullah or the Shadow of God. There are also three classes of ministers of religion, the Imacems or priests, the Shieks or ordinary preachers, the Katibs or readers, or deacons. Each individual Mussulman has no further privilege than that of personal prayer, which must always be offered towards the Caaba, a privilege which, to the shame of most Christians, they are far more observant of, than the latter are towards the injunctions and exhortations of the purest and sublimest precepts ever given to man. As for the parallel which Mr. Higgins has ventured to draw between the descriptions of the book of Revelations, which are spiritual, and such as God only could disclose, and the sensual vicious colouring of the Koran, it only serves to establish the testimony of his total want of genuine information on the subject; the descriptions of Muhammed being borrowed entirely from former oriental details and fic. |