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Such, we are to understand, was not the Mahometan system; such had been the system of Rome. ‘Socially and politically,’ proceeds the passage, ‘the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet’s religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny.’ The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468–‘ The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet’s doctrines.’

Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted to its too famous founder; it owes to him a principle, viz. the unity of God, which, merely through a capital blunder, it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that illiterate people–that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek, there was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence. Once open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact, that Christians had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity. Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or schismatic; such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time, such as Arius or Pelagius at another. In his character of theologian, therefore, Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers, supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In his other character of legislator, we have seen that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested no motive for resistance, it could be no honor to prevail. And where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that this pretended apostle of social improvements had devised or hinted no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied defiance to the world which was no defiance at all, being exactly what Christians had believed for six centuries, and Jews for six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer, with a fancied conciliation to the world, which was no conciliation at all, but was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any effect at all.

We have thus reviewed some of the more splendid aspects connected with Mr. Finlay’s theme; but that theme, in its entire compass, is worthy of a far more extended investigation than our own limits will allow, or than the historical curiosity of the world (misdirected here as in so many other cases) has hitherto demanded. The Greek race, suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman empire, into which for a time it had been absorbed, but again emerging from this blaze, and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and influence, offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions, and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it has suffered. To have overlooked this subject, is one amongst the capital oversights of Gibbon. To have rescued it from utter oblivion, and to have traced an outline for its better illumination, is the peculiar merit of Mr. Finlay. His greatest fault is–to have been careless or slovenly in the niceties of classical and philological precision. His greatest praise, and a very great one indeed, is–to have thrown the light of an original philosophic sagacity upon a neglected province of history, indispensable to the arrondissement of Pagan archaeology.