Transmission of Intelligence.

187

at any port at which they may touch, but for the purpose of coaling, and landing and embarking mails; and their rapid and punctual arrival in this country, after, in some instances, running a distance of 3000 miles without stopping, is one of the wonders of this remarkable age."

When a mail-packet is due at Southampton, watchmen are employed day and night to look out for her. In the day-time, when the weather is clear, and there is not much wind stirring, the smoke of a large mail-packet in the Solent may be seen from the quay by looking over Cadlands; but homeward-bound steamers are generally made out by means of powerful telescopes, after they have passed Eaglehurst Castle, by looking over the flat tongue of land which terminates where Calshot Castle stands. When she rounds Calshot Castle, a rocket is thrown up from her, which is a mail-packet signal. As soon as the rocket is observed, the watchmen are in motion running in different directions up the town. In a few minutes may be seen stealthily gliding towards the quay a few persons who, if it be a winter night, would scarcely be recognisable, disguised as they appear to be in great coats, comforters, and every kind of waterproof covering for the head, feet, and body. These persons are the outpost newspaper agents. They make for the head of the quay, and each jumps into a small yacht, which instantly darts from the shore.

Cold, dark, and cheerless as it may be, the excitement on board the yachts is very great in calculating which will reach the steamer first, and at no regatta is there more nautical science displayed, or the contention more keen or earnest.

Let us suppose the time to be about six o'clock in the morning of a dark winter day. The yachts reaching the steamer just as "Ease her" has been hoarsely bawled by the pilot off Netley Abbey. As soon as practique has been granted, the newspaper agents climb up the sides of the steamer oftentimes by a single rope, and at the risk of their lives, and jump on board. A bundle of foreign journals is handed to each of them, and they immediately return to their yachts and make for the shore.

They arrive at the Telegraph Office, and to write down their message is the work of a few minutes only.

The rule in writing down telegraphic messages is truly Benthamic, viz., to convey the greatest quantity of news in the fewest possible words. Perhaps the message is as follows:"Great Western,-Jamaica 2d. Cruz 26.-Million dollars. Dividends 50 thousand. Mosquito war ended. Antilles healthy. Havanna hurricane. Hundred ships lost. Crops good. Jamaica rains. Sea covered. Wreck plantations." While the agents are writing these messages, the telegraph is at work, and by the time the messages are written at Southampton, they have been

almost communicated to Lothbury. A cab conveys written copies of them with the utmost despatch to the newspaper offices. They are immediately in the hands of the foreign editors, or sub-editors, who comprehend the purport of them immediately. In a few minutes they have been elaborated and made intelligible, and they shortly appear in a conspicuous part of the morning papers in the following shape:

"Arrival of the West India and Mexican Mail. Important news from the West Indies. Dreadful Hurricane at Havannah. Awful Destruction of Property in Jamaica.

"The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's steamer, Great Western, has arrived at Southampton. She brings news from Jamaica up to the 2d instant, and from Santa Cruz up to the 26th ult. She has on board freight to the amount of 1,000,000 of dollars on merchants' account, and 50,000 dollars on account of Mexican dividends. The miserable little war' unfortunately entered into by this country on behalf of the black King of Mosquito, has terminated. We regret to learn that a most destructive hurricane has happened at Havannah, and that 100 ships have been wrecked in consequence. The weather, we are happy to say, has been fine in the West Indies, and the Islands are healthy. The crops of West India produce are progressing favourably. The May rains at Jamaica have been very heavy, and have done considerable damage. The rivers have swollen enormously, overflown their banks, and done great damage to the plantations. The sea, at the mouths of the rivers, was covered with the wrecks of the plantations."

While, in conclusion, we thank Mr. Hunt for much useful information concerning the working of a modern newspaper, which none but a newspaper editor could supply, we must express our regret that he has not been able to devote more time and research than he has done, to the exhaustion and elaboration of his momentous theme. The excuse, however, which is implied in the following words, is a valid one; and the general fact which they assert, bears with unmistakable force upon the subjects of the remarks which preface this notice :

"The man who once becomes a journalist must almost bid farewell to mental rest or mental leisure. If he fulfils his duties truthfully, his attention must be ever awake to what is passing in the world, and his whole mind must be devoted to the instant examination, and discussion, and record, of current events. He has little time for literary idleness, with such literary labour on his shoulders. He has no days to spend on catalogues, or in dreamy, discursive, researches in public libraries. He has no months to devote to the exhaustion of any one theme. What he has to deal with must be taken up at a moment's notice, be examined, tested, and dismissed at once; and thus his mind is ever kept occupied with the mental necessity of the world's passing hour."

Mahomet and the Koran.

189

ART. VI.-Life of Mahomet. By WASHINGTON IRVING.
London, Murray, 1850.

IN the year 613, the inhabitants of Mecca, a considerable walled town, situated in a barren 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-alMotalleb," 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 my 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 neighbourhood, so that, both in and around the town, nothing was spoken of but the divine mission of Mahomet Ibn Abdallah.

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 out

cast 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 course of the general distribution of the Arabian Peninsula among the multitudinous tribes, whether pure or Ishmaelitish, that divided the possession 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 worshipped 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 towards which, as towards 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 travelling 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 Kor

Shemitic Characteristics.

191

eishites, 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 Meccathe chief in civil authority, the most active in business, and the recognised 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 favourite 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 numerous 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 humour;