man, who put on the appearance only of those good qualities, while the governing principles of his soul were ambition and lust.  For we see him, as soon as he found himself strong enough to act upon the offensive, plundering caravans, and, under a pretence of fighting for the true religion, attacking, murdering, enslaving, and making tributaries of his neighbors, in order to aggrandize and enrich himself and his greedy followers, and without scruple making use of assassination to cut off those who opposed him.  Of his lustful disposition we have a sufficient proof, in the peculiar privileges he claimed to himself of having as many wives as he pleased, and of whom he chose, even though they were within forbidden degrees of affinity.  The authors who give him the smallest number of wives own that he had fifteen; whereas the Koran allows no Mussulman more than four.  As for himself, Mahomet had no shame in avowing that his chief pleasures were perfumes and women.

THE KORAN

The Koran is held by the Mahometans in the greatest veneration.  The book must not be touched by anybody but a Mussulman, nor even by a believer except he be free from pollution.  Whether the Koran be created or uncreated has been the subject of a controversy fruitful of the most violent persecutions.  The orthodox opinion is that the original has been written from all eternity on the preserved table.  Of this they believe a complete transcript was brought down to the lower heaven (that of the moon) by the angel Gabriel, and thence taken and shown to Mahomet, once every year of his mission, and twice in the last year of his life.  They assert, however, that it was only piecemeal, that the several parts were revealed by the angel to the prophet, and that he immediately dictated what had been revealed to his secretary, who wrote it down.  Each part, as soon as it was thus copied out, was communicated to his disciples, to get by heart, and was afterward deposited in what he called the chest of his apostleship.  This chest the prophet left in the custody of his wife Hafsa.

When we consider the way in which the Koran was compiled, we cannot wonder that it is so incoherent a piece as we find it.  The book is divided into chapters; of these some are very long; others again, especially a few toward the end, very short.  Each chapter has a title prefixed, taken from the first word, or from some one particular thing mentioned in it, rarely from the subject-matter of it; for if a chapter be of any length, it usually runs into various subjects that have no connection with each other.  A celebrated commentator divides the contents of the Koran into three general heads:  1.  Precepts or directions, relating either to religion, as prayers, fasting, pilgrimages, or to civil polity, as marriages, inheritances, judicatures. 2.  Histories—­whereof some are taken from the Scriptures, but falsified