1828.] 



anity with Mahommedanlsm, and taken 

 pains to shew its vast superiority over its 

 rival. The course he takes is to give a 

 summary view of the life of Mahomet, 

 which the reader will find in Gibbon, and 

 the causes which led to his success ; and the 

 bare fact of success is shewn to be no proof 

 of divine original. Christianity and Islam- 

 ism are then compared and the success of 

 the former is proved to be miraculous, and 

 that of the latter accounted for on the com- 

 mon principles of life, and being itself an- 

 ticipated by prophecy, will ultimately be 

 subservient to the establishment of truth. 

 Some account is then given of the Koran, 

 with some of its distinguishing tenets, and 

 specimens of its style its literary character 

 is also discussed, and shewn, on the autho- 

 rity of Arabic writers, to be, after all, no 

 such marvel, as it has injudiciously some- 

 times been allowed, and as Mahommed, who 

 knew most about it, affirmed. The radical 

 defects of Islamism are then pointed out 

 it fails in the essential characteristics of a 

 revelation it has no miracles no prophe- 

 cies is opposed to former dispensations 

 and has neither any doctrine of redemption, 

 nor any commutation for it nor any ori- 

 ginality. Our own scriptures are then vin- 

 dicated from the aspersions cast upon them 

 by Mahommedans especially the charge of 

 corruption ; and misrepresentations mani- 

 fest ones are specified, particularly in the 

 History of Christ, as collected from the 

 Koran itself. The incidental blessings con- 

 ferred by Christianity none of which ac- 

 company Mahommedanism are then in- 

 sisted on as presumptive proof of its divinity 

 such as the improved moral and political, 

 as well as religious, condition of the coun- 

 tries, where Christianity has penetrated 

 the superior intelligence of Christian coun- 

 tries the spirit of investigation which dis- 

 tinguishes them, manifestly encouraged by 

 the scriptures the wider diffusion of bene- 

 volence the softening of national asperities, 

 &c some of which, however, must be taken 

 with considerable allowances. 



The volume concludes with an interpre- 

 tation and application of a portion of the 

 Apocalypse to Mahommedanism, to which 

 we have already alluded 



When the light of truth shall penetrate these 

 dark regions, all the efforts of Grand Seignors, 

 Sultans, Bashaws, and Muftis, to extinguish it, 

 will be unavailing. Though various causes may 

 combine to impede its progress, yet its ultimate 

 'success is certain and irresistible. 

 And more to the same purpose, in terms 

 which nobody will of course think of con- 

 troverting. 



The author takes credit to himself, and 

 deserves it, in his life of Mahommed, for cor- 

 recting the mis-statements, now universally 

 exploded, of former writers such as 

 that Mahommed was of obscure origin 

 the story of the tame pigeon, which whis- 



Domestic and Foreign. 531 



pered the commands of God in his ear his* 

 being subject to epilepsy, and pretending 

 that the attacks of the disorder were illapses 

 of the spirit, and that his mortal part strained 

 to the height 



" In that celestial colloquy divine, 

 Dazzled and spent, sunk down and sought re- 

 pair" 



That he had difficulty in persuading his 

 wife to embrace his religion that he at- 

 tacked the Meccans merely under pretence 

 of their having broken the treaty that he 

 forcibly despoiled some orphans of their 

 house to erect a mosque in Medina that 

 his coffin was suspended by magnets in the 

 air at Mecca, &c. 



Travels in Sicily and the Lipari Islands, 

 in 1 824, by a Naval Officer ; 1 828. For any 

 one who wishes for a brief sketch of the actual 

 geographical condition of Sicily, along the 

 coast of it, and of the ruins and records 

 of the olden, splendid days of the island, 

 this will prove a valuable book, and save 

 abundance of labour. The survey was in- 

 deed a rapid one not more than a month 

 being spent on the tour : but then the au- 

 thor had only to look and move the his- 

 torical recollections with which the volume 

 abounds, connected with the localities, were 

 gathered before and after they are elabo- 

 rately got up, and carefully stated. The 

 author's views, for the most part, are con- 

 fined to the illustration of the places rather 

 than the people of Sicily it is the history 

 and events of ages past, and not of the exist- 

 ing government or population of Sicily, with 

 which he is concerned he writes like a 

 scholar, or an antiquary, or a man of books 

 such as these things were in days of yore, 

 and not at all like a man engaged in active 

 life, whose thoughts naturally turn more to 

 the present than the past, more to the ani- 

 mate than the inanimate intent upon the 

 laws, and customs, and principles which in- 

 fluence the character and welfare of living 

 beings, more than upon the ruined and for- 

 gotten splendour of by-gone days ; though 

 towards the close of the volume, the author 

 has some remarks on the baleful effects of 

 absenteeism on the part of the nobles of 

 Sicily, which will very well illustrate "those 

 of Ireland, and shew that he has hot quite 

 forgotten his own times. 



The author set out from Naples, in a 

 steam-packet, for Palermo steam-packets 

 are every where now and in his course 

 passes Capri; which, haying visited on some 



former occasion, he briefly describes, and is 

 exceedingly severe, and even fierce, upon 

 Tiberius ; and at some distance contem- 

 plates Stromboli, and the flames of its eter- 

 nal volcano, which still burns an unfailing 

 beacon to the frequenters of the surrounding 

 seas. Arrived at Palermo, he loses no time 

 in looking about him flying in all direc- 

 tions-trusting resolutely to his own eyes, 

 3 Y2 



