LITERATURE OP THE ARABS. 121 



Though the Saracens cannot claim to rank high 

 as inventors and discoverers, they must be acknow- 

 ledged as the restorers of letters and the great depo- 

 sitaries of science. Many useful treatises, now lost 

 in the original, were preserved in their language. 

 Besides some of the commentaries of Galen and 

 Hippocrates, we owe to this cause the completion 

 of the mathematical works of Apollonius Pergaus ; 

 part of which, in Arabic, was discovered about the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, in the Medicean 

 Library, and part among the Bodleian Collection, 

 of which a Latin version was given by the Savilian 

 professors, Bernard and Halley. It is unquestion- 

 able that a great number of the inventions which 

 at the present day add to the comforts of life, 

 and without which literature and the arts could 

 never have flourished, are due to the Arabs. They 

 taught us the use of the pendulum in the mea- 

 surement of time j and also of the telegraph, though 

 not with all the speed and effect of modern improve- 

 ment. The manufacture of silk and cotton was 

 brought by them into Spain, as was probably the 

 art of dyeing black with indigo. They introduced 

 the use of camels and carrier-pigeons into Sicily. 

 The art of enamelling steel, the system of a national 

 police, the principles of taxation, and the benefits 

 of public libraries, were all derived from the same 

 source. Rhyme, a pleasing characteristic of mo- 

 dern verse, though some have assigned to it a Go- 

 thic origin, was doubtless borrowed from the Sara- 

 cens by the troubadours and Prove^al bards, who 

 derived from the same source the sentiment of ho- 

 nour, the mysticism of love, and the spirit of chi- 



great library at Fez, which contained 32,00 volumes, there was 

 preserved an entire copy of Livy in Arabic. Lomier, de Biblioth. 



