land in his own age. But when his system passed the borders of the land in which it was so great a reform, it became the greatest of curses to mankind. The main cause which has made the religion of Mahomet exercise so blighting an influence on every land where it has been preached is because it is an imperfect system standing in the way of one more perfect. Islam has in it just enough of good to hinder the reception of greater good. When Islam is preached to a tribe of savage heathen, its acceptance is in itself an unmixed blessing. But it is a blessing which cuts off all hope of the reception of a greater blessing; the heathen, in his utter darkness, is far more likely to accept the faith of Christ than the Mahometan in his state of half enlightenment. In all the lands where Islam has been preached, it has regulated and softened many of the evils of earlier systems. But in regulating and softening them it has established them forever. The New Testament nowhere forbids slavery; it can hardly be said to contain any direct prohibition of polygamy. Preached as the Gospel was to subjects of the Roman Empire, among whom a frightful licentiousness was rife, but among whom legal polygamy was unheard of, there was little need to enlarge on the subject. But it is plain that the principles of Christian purity would of themselves, without any direct precept, hinder polygamy from becoming the law of any Christian land. But Islam, by the very fact of regulating and restraining the license of its own native land, has made polygamy the abiding law of every Mahometan people. The Gospel nowhere forbids slavery; but it lays down precepts whose spirit is inconsistent with slavery, and which have, after a long struggle, succeeded in rooting out slavery from all Eu ropean, and from most Christian lands. But Islam, by the very fact of enforcing justice and mercy for the slave, has perpetuated the existence of slavery among all its disciples. Christianity, by giving no civil precepts, has remained capable of adapting itself to every form of government, to every state of society. Islam, by enforcing a code of precepts which were a vast reform at Mecca and Medina in the seventh century, has condemned all the lands of its obedience to abide in a state of imperfect civilization. Christianity lays down no rule as to the relations of the ecclesiastical and civil powers; it lays down

no rule as to the political and civil dealings of its disciples with men of other creeds. Islam, by attaching the civil power to its religious head, has condemned all Mahometan nations to abiding despotism; by enjoining the toleration of the unbeliever on certain fixed conditions, it hinders the establishment of real religious equality in any land where it is dominant. It is easy, by picking out the brightest spots in the history of Islam and the darkest spots in the history of Christendom, to draw an attractive picture of the benefits which Islam has given to the world. It is easy, by shutting our eyes to the existence of the Eastern Rome, to persuade ourselves, not only that science and art made great advances in the hands of the Mahometan disciples of Byzantium, but that they formed an actual monopoly in their hands. It is easy, by dwelling on the splendors of Bagdad and Cordova, to forget the desolation of Africa, the trampling under foot for so many ages of the national life of Persia. It is easy to show that the teaching of Islam was in itself far better than the idolatry of India, better even than the shape which the creed of Zoroaster had taken in later times. Nay, it may be that, in some times and places, Islam may have been felt as kindling a truer spiritual life than some of the forms of corrupted Christianity. But it is well to remember that the same corruptions which had already crept into Christianity, crept, in their own time, into Islam also. stition of the Persian, the saint worship of the Turk, have fallen as far away from the first teaching of the Prophet of Arabia as any form of Christianity has fallen away from the first teaching of the Gospel. But let it be that, in all heathen and even in some Christian lands, Islam in its first and best days appeared as a reform. Still it is a reform which has stifled all other reforms. It is a reform which has chained down every nation which has accepted it at a certain stage of moral and political growth. As such, this system of imperfect truth must ever be the greatest hindrance in the way of more perfect truth. Because Islam comes nearer to Christianity than any other false system, because it comes nearer than any other to satisfying the wants of man's spiritual nature, for that very reason it is, above all other false systems, pre-eminently anti-christian. It is, as it were, the personal enemy and rival of the faith, dis

The mystic super

puting on equal terms for the same prize. It has shown itself so in the whole course of history; it must go on showing itself so, wherever the disciples of Mahomet cleave faithfully to the spirit and the letter of their own law.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, we may do justice to whatever is good in the system; we may admire whatever was good in its founder. We may lament that a man who began as so mighty an instrument of good in his own time should have changed into an abiding instrument of evil for all time. Still we may admire the personal virtues of the man, his constancy in the days of his adversity, his sublime simplicity in his days of triumph. And we can look with sympathy on earnest believers in his teaching, who labor to spread the knowledge of such imperfect truth as they have among those who are still further cut off from the knowledge of the right way. Islam, we should never forget, is still a missionary religion, one which still makes its way, by persuasion as well as by conquest, into the dark corners of the heathen world. We may sigh that the preaching of an imperfect creed proves everywhere the greatest hindrance to the preaching of a more perfect one; we may grudge the successes of the Mahometan missionary which condemn beforehand the labors of the Christian missionary to be in vain; but for the Mahometan missionary himself, giving himself to hand on to others such light as he himself has, we can feel

For

nothing but respect and sympathy. And we can feel sympathy too for earnest believers in Islam, devout students of the Koran, who have enough of faith in their own system, enough of good-will towards the followers of rival systems, to challenge men of rival creeds to meet them on the fair field of reasonable discussion. our own part in the matter, we have gone but little into detail; we have preferred to record the impressions which we have drawn from the Koran and from its great German and English interpreters, chiefly as bearing on the great facts of history, and especially on the relations of Islam to other monotheistic creeds. But we shall be well pleased if we can send any in whom we can awaken a wish to study the subject more in detail, to the works of Weil and Muir, and those who are more enduring to that of Dr. Sprenger. But we feel that all that we do we are doing from an imperfect point of view, from the point of view of those who look to the history and religions of the East mainly in their relation to the European and Christian world. But a view from the side of purely Oriental learning can hardly fail to be equally imperfect. Till some superhuman genius shall unite in himself the lore of all ages and languages, scholars in different branches must be content to interchange the ideas which they have formed from their several points of view, and each one to profit by the experience of fellow-laborers in other fields.

LONDON fifty years ago was in many respects a very different city from the London of to-day. To name only one point, there were no railways; those huge roofs that span the long platforms and iron webs of Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, London Bridge, Victoria, Charing Cross, were not yet shadowed forth in the wildest dreams of architect or engineer. The word "terminus" (which has risen, culminated, and is now going out-since we are not willing to accept any finality in physical progress) was then unknown to fame; nay, "omnibus," which preceded it, was

The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. I.

Where the

as yet in the womb of time. huge station and hotel now dominate Charing Cross, used to be Hungerford Market, with old lanes around it leading to the river; and in one of these lanes, rather less than half a century ago, was a blacking-warehouse-a young and envious rival of the celebrated Warren's, of 30 Strand. It was "the last house on the left-hand side of the way at old Hungerford-stairs. It was a crazy, tumbledown old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats." A little boy, about ten or eleven years old, who was at this time employed in the blacking-warehouse in a very humble capacity, afterward, when he was grown up, wrote an account

of the place and his own experience there: "Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old gray rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot."

The chief manager of the blacking warehouse was a relative or connection of the little boy who was thus employed at the wages of six or seven shillings a week. He was a sort of cousin, and, though much older, had been friends with little Charley from the latter's cradle. Charley was born at Portsmouth, on the 7th of February, 1812, where his father, Mr. John Dickens, was then employed as a clerk in the Navypay Office.

A sister of Mrs. John Dickens had married a Mr. Lamert, a widower with two sons. Mr. Lamert died. His widow, and the younger of her two stepsons, James Lamert, took up their abode with Mr. and Mrs. John Dickens, and formed part of their family circle. From Portsmouth they all moved together (one infers) to London in 1814, and thence to Chatham in 1816. They were certainly all living together at Chatham. Here Mrs. Lamert married a second time, and her stepson James, "a youth of some ability," was sent to Sandhurst for his education, continuing to visit Chatham from time to time.

At Chatham little Charley Dickens stayed till he was nine years old. "He was a very little and a very sickly boy. He was subject to attacks of violent spasm which

disabled him for any active exertion. He was never a good little cricket-player. He was never a first-rate hand at marbles, or peg-top, or prisoner's base. But he had great pleasure in watching the other boys, officers' sons for the most part, at these games, reading while they played; and he had always the belief that this early sickness had brought to himself one inestimable advantage, in the circumstance of his weak health having strongly inclined him to reading. He has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for knowledge, and his earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his mother, who taught him the first rudiments not only of English, but also, a little later, of Latin. She taught him regularly every day for a long time, and taught him, he was convinced, thoroughly well... Then followed the preparatory day-school, a school for girls and boys, to which he went with his sister Fanny." There was "a small collection of books in a little room upstairs," and from these the sickly boy rummaged out and read eagerly every thing in the shape of a story-Roderick Random, Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights, and other famous works of fiction, and with these the Spectator, Idler, Citizen of the World, Mrs. Inchbald's Collection of Farces, and some volumes of voyages and travels.

The child

He

"The usual result followed. took to writing, himself; and became famous in his childish circle for having written a tragedy called Misnar, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally founded, no doubt) on one of the Tales of the Genii. Nor was this his only distinction. told a story off-hand so well, and sang small comic songs so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs and tables, both at home and abroad, for more effective display of these talents." James Lamert took the child for his first visit to the theatre, at a very tender age, but he was old enough "to recollect how his young heart leapt with terror as the wicked king Richard, struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond, backed up and bumped against the box in which he was." During the last two years of Charles's residence at Chatham, he was sent to a school kept in Clover-lane, by a young Baptist minister, Mr. William Giles. "He was not much over nine years old when his

father was recalled from Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave this good master, and the old place endeared to him by recollections that clung to him afterwards all his life long."

Mr. John Dickens, as his son wrote afterward, was as "kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. Every thing that I can remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business, charge, or trust that he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honorably discharge. His industry has always been untiring. He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing." But he was easy-going, unapt for making way in the world; and having an increasing family, and at best but a very small income, (we infer that he was now withdrawn from active service, and placed on reduced pay,) gradually became involved in petty debts, and was beset by creditors. The family had to take up its abode in Bayham street, Camden Town, in "a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden abutting on a squalid court." Poor Mr. John Dickens was decidedly sinking in the world. "In the ease of his temper" (writes his son, describing the case) "and the straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in the work of the little house; and looking after my little brothers and sisters (we were now six in all;) and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living."

"The elder cousin of whom I have spoken, James Lamert, who had lately completed his education at Sandhurst and was waiting in hopes of a commission, lived now with a family in Bayham Street, and has not lost his taste for the stage, or his ingenuities in connection with it. Taking pity on the solitary lad, he made and painted a little theatre for him. It was the only fanciful reality of his present life."

Affairs went from bad to worse.

The

father's "resources were so low, and all his expedients so thoroughly exhausted," that Mrs. Dickens resolved to make the experiment,,however hopeless, of opening a Preparatory School. A house was found at number four Gower Street North, a brass plate put on the door, and circulars sent round. "Yet nobody ever came to school, nor do I recollect that any body ever proposed to come, or that the least preparation was made to receive any body. But I know that we got on very badly with the butcher and baker; that very often we had not too much for dinner; and that at last my father was arrested." The interval between the sponging-house and the prison was passed by the sorrowful lad in running errands and carrying messages for the prisoner, delivered with swollen eyes and through shining tears; and the last words said to him by his father, before he was finally carried to the Marshalsea, were to the effect that the sun was set upon him forever."

The poor family in number four Gower Street North had to make much use of the pawnbroker; "until at last even of the furniture there was nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen-table, and some beds. Then they encamped, as it were, in the two parlors of the emptied house, and lived there night and day." Before they removed from Camden Town, James Lamert had ceased to live with them, (naturally enough!) though continuing on the old intimate terms.

Now a cousin of his, George Lamert by name, having apparently some money and no definite occupation, was, about this time, accidentally induced to go into an odd kind of business. There was a famous blacking manufacturer, Robert Warren, whose throne was at 30 Strand; and there was a relative and rival, but of less celebrity, one Jonathan Warren, at 30 Hungerford-stairs, Strand, who advertised. against Robert, and solemnly asserted that he (Jonathan) was the original inventor or proprietor of the blacking recipe. Jonathan privately offered his business for sale. It could easily, by the aid of a little capital, be enormously developed, and so forth. George Lamert bought the "business and premises," and set up his cousin James as manager. And James, the connection and life-long intimate of the Dickens family and little Charley, seeing the boy doing nothing at home except boot

cleaning and errands, learning nothing, earning nothing, and contributing one more hungry mouth to be supplied somehow; the father in jail, every thing pawnable gone to the pawn-office-in this state of things James Lamert "proposed (says the autobiographer) that I should go into the blacking-warehouse, to be as useful as I could, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first, and seven afterwards. At any rate, the offer was accepted very willingly by my father and mother, and on Monday morning I went down to the blacking-warehouse to begin my business

life."

The boy was not placed among the other boys in the blacking warehouse, but in "a recess in the counting-house," and "our relative had kindly arranged to teach me something in the dinner-hour-from twelve to one, I think it was-every day."

The arrangement might well appear at the time as tolerable a one as could have been hoped for under all the circumstances, and a great improvement on poor little Charley's condition at home. But in after years he wrote with the utmost bitterness of his having been "so easily cast away at such an age." . . . "My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge."

It is true that the plan, as so often happens, did not take shape exactly according to the programme. As to the hour's teaching every day by Lamert, an "arrangement so incompatible with counting-house business soon died away, from no fault of his or mine; and for the same reason, my small work-table, and my grosses of pots, my papers, string, scissors, paste-pot, and labels, by little and little, vanished out of the recess in the counting-house, and kept company with the other small work-tables, grosses of pots, papers, string, scissors, and paste-pots, downstairs."

After a while the house in Gower Street North had to be given up, and Charles was sent to lodge with a "reduced old lady, long known to our family," in Little College Street, Camden Town. Seven shillings a week is not a large in

come, certainly; yet, (lodging and clothes already provided,) the little boy might have had enough wholesome food with it, with proper management; but, he says, " I was so young and childish, and so little qualified-how could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that, in going to Hungerford-stairs of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half price on trays at the confectioners' doors in Tottenham-courtroad; and I often spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding."

Every Sunday Charles and his sister Fanny, (two years his elder, and a pupil in the Royal Academy of Music,) passed in the Marshalsea with their father. The prison was on the Southwark side of London Bridge. One Sunday night little Charles remonstrated with his father, with many tears, on the loneliness of lodging all by himself in Camden Town. "He began to think that it was not quite right. I do believe he had never thought so before, or thought about it. A back-attic was found for me at the house of an insolvent-court agent, who lived in Lant street in the Borough, where Bob Sawyer lodged many years afterwards. A bed and bedding were sent over for me, and made upon the floor. The little window had a pleasant prospect of a timber yard; and when I took possession of my new abode, I thought it was a Paradise."

"From this time" (says Mr. Forster) "he used to breakfast at home,' in other words in the Marshalsea; going to it as early as the gates were open, and for the most part much earlier. They had no want of bodily comforts there. His father's income, still going on, was amply sufficient for that; and in every respect indeed but elbow-room, I have heard him say, the family lived more comfortably in prison than they had done for a long time out of it. They were waited on still by the maid-of-all-work from Bayham Street, the orphan girl of the Chatham work-house, from whose sharp little worldly and also kindly ways he took his first impression of the Marchioness in the Old Curiosity Shop."

"Besides breakfast, he had supper also in the prison, and got to his lodging generally at nine o'clock. The gates closed always at ten."