Meccan ritual just as he took much from the Jews and something from the Christians. But it is not clear why in the one dispute he was a sincere reformer and in the others a conscious opportunist. If idolatry or no idolatry had been the question, it is certain that the kissing of the black stone would not have been taken over from the earlier cult. But the theory of the prophetic office in the Koran has really but little to do with the inculcation of doctrines. The nations are punished for disobeying the prophets, not for holding wrong opinions or doing immoral acts. Agreement with a prophet on every subject was valueless unless that agreement meant belief in the prophet's authority.

If we choose to deal with the kernel rather than with the shell, and see whither Mohammed's claim led and how he enforced it, admiration for his intellectual ability is the feeling that most fills the mind. Every poor fortuneteller at a fair claims to have access to 'the Guarded Table,' i.e. to be able to read the decrees of God, to which others have no approach; and is not necessarily a conscious impostor. Yet he or she is satisfied with a few coppers for the exercise of the power. To a great mind the inference occurred that such a power gave a right to supremacy in the state and in the world, to reconstruct the moral code, to dictate every item of human conduct. But without proper knowledge of mankind, without coolness of head and clearness of vision, without patience and tenacity of purpose, the announcement of such a claim would have resulted in a miserable fiasco, provocative of laughter and contempt, and afterwards forgotten. In the case of Mohammed it resulted in the foundation of a new religion, and in the conquest of half the world.

Nor can it be said that such great results were altogether unearned. The world gives nothing for nothing; and not only was a revision of the moral code a boon to Arabia, but the erection of a powerful state was unquestionably a meritorious achievement. To take the execution of the law out of the hands of individuals and tribal organisations and compel obedience to a central authority which, even in remote regions of the desert it was unsafe to disobey, was a result justifying many irregularities, if ever the end justifies the means. Intellectual gifts of so high an order are not intelligible

without some corresponding moral qualities, and indeed the Prophet's extraordinary self-control might rank as either. His ordinance abolishing the use of liquor, issued and observed by him after he had passed his fiftieth year, is an example. Still rarer qualities are two negative ones-freedom from envy and freedom from vindictiveness. To his doctrine that Islam cancelled all that was before it, he adhered, whatever the provocation to violate it; no insult and no outrage that had been inflicted on himself or those nearest and dearest to him was ever remembered when once its author had acknowledged that Mohammed was the Apostle of God. If men had talents that he did not possess he gladly utilised them in his service; hence the victories won for Islam were largely the work of those who had been its prominent opponents. Improvements in his system and suggestions for his campaigns were welcomed, if only no scepticism were expressed as to his access to the divine will; and that access, though so emphatically maintained, was never asserted by him for his own glorification to the detriment of the state. To the state, its growth and maintenance, the whole energy of his being was directed, and for it he was prepared to make almost any sacrifice.

By the transformation of this man of war and statecraft into a saint and visionary, whether by his own act or that of others, the concept of saintliness loses a great deal and the founder of Islam gains very little. In a world that had been worth his winning he found two things, he said, worth enjoying, scent and the fair sex! Islam shows many examples of saintliness that took the same line without the genius for war and diplomacy, and the result has been unedifying.

Those who aided the Prophet received a very different reward from that which fell to the lot of the apostles of the Christian Saviour. One or two died honourably on the battle-field; more lived to become princes and governors, to direct the fate of cities and nations, to pile up wealth greater than Meccah and Medinah together had possessed before Islam, to fill harems rivalling or surpassing in attractiveness those which awaited them in paradise. These persons were the true interpreters of the Prophet's ideas; they followed whither he had led, and perhaps went farther than he, but in the same direction. Such spiritual

value as Islam possesses was the gift of the decried theologians, men who thought the world worth neither winning nor enjoying, and who laboured not for the meat which perisheth.

It is, however, time to leave controversial matter, from which the subjective element cannot be altogether excluded, and terminate with some warm expressions of admiration for the service rendered to students of history by the prince's minute investigations and colossal industry, which must certainly place him in the front rank of contemporary scholars and historians. If, for the period which closes with the Prophet's death, the labours of numerous workers had rendered the bulk of the material generally accessible, for that which begins with the Caliphate of Abu Bekr very much less had been accomplished, and it should be gratefully acknowledged that the prince has so far introduced order where there was confusion, and lucidity where there was obscurity. The causes and the nature of the uprisings in Arabia which followed on the Prophet's death, the order of events which led to their suppression and the commencements of the Islamic conquests in the Byzantine and Persian Empires, are traced with such exhaustive research and critical acumen as seem to leave little for future enquirers to glean. In the essay on the 'General Aspects of the Arab Conquests' the prince leaves special for universal history, and, partly guided by the suggestions of Winckler, endeavours to find for that memorable expansion a place in a series determined by cosmic causes, and in which the rainfall of the Arabian peninsula plays a more important part than the genius of Mohammed or his lieutenants. That essay may be regarded as a final vindication of Arabia as the original home of the Semitic peoples, while giving an adequate account of the phenomena which have caused eminent investigators to seek it elsewhere. But even if some of the prince's results appear to be less convincing, it may be asserted that his work is epoch-making for the study of Islamic history, in which it will occupy a place similar to that of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum' in the study of Semitic epigraphy.

Art. VI.-A FAMOUS ETON HOUSE.

Annals of an Eton House, with some notes on the Evans family. By Major Gambier Parry. London: Murray, 1907.

'ANNALS of an Eton House' is primarily a book for the initiated. It is the history of an Eton boarding-house, which grew and flourished in the hands of a little family dynasty during a period of nearly seventy years. To old members of that house, and indeed to old Etonians generally, the volume is like a miniature 'Iliad.' The forms of heroes stalk through the pages, among a crowd of lesser forms. The book makes no claim to literary scheme or proportion; it is a collection of episodes and scattered reminiscences. In reading it, one is confronted with the fact that, no matter how eminent the writer may be, every one's reminiscences of his schooldays bear a melancholy resemblance to the schoolboy reminiscences of every one else. The points that seem to linger in the mature memory appear to be always the food, the fagging, the floggings, the awful majesty of house-captain and headmaster; and when we come to the escapades, confessed with a sort of innocent complacency, we cannot help wondering whether, seen through the golden mist of years, they have not become a little brighter and more adventurous, more edged with prismatic hues, than they were in real life, After all, in looking back on boyhood, it is not really the incidents which we rememberthe same and similar incidents befall us still every day and hour-it is the ardent, lively, unwearied, inquisitive spirit in which we made trial of them, and which lent them their brisk savour. The change of quality is in us and not in our environment. And even so, the book has its charm, because it is full of the spirit of boyhood and recollected joy; moreover, to those who can read between the lines, it is full, too, of deep pathos, the pathos of notre pauvre et triste humanité-the plaintive entrance upon the world, the ardent growth, the radiant confidence, the brief performance, the bewildered exit. If the book is full of youth and light, it is haunted by such phantoms as Gray, in his Eton Ode, saw beckoning from

the vale of years. It may seem morbid to indulge such reveries, but surely school records of any kind, written page or carved panel, are the most pathetic things in the world, brimming over with the lacrima rerum, because of the contrast between high-spirited, ardent, impulsive adolescence-its limitless dreams, its sturdy optimismand the years that lie beyond, even if they are shadowed by no reflection more serious than that which troubled the spirit of the philosopher who, looking on at a game of cricket, heaved a sigh to think that so many of those bright boys would be turned in so few years into dull members of Parliament !

On the other hand, we have the encouraging and uplifting spectacle of character blossoming and strengthening under wholesome school influences; the timid, weakkneed boy becoming resolute and strong by the force of an admired example; the morose and suspicious gaining frankness and good-humour in the sunlight of success; and, best sight of all, the simple, wholesome, ingenuous nature making its gracious and tranquil progress, unsuspicious of evil, unconscious of merit, driving meanness and tyranny and all uglier spirits to cover by its pure and serene radiance, and then launching off into the world to do noble and sturdy work, unpraised perhaps, and even unnoticed, but no less beneficently there; or perhaps, on the other hand, to be recognised and crowned, as the world does crown, clumsily and almost by haphazard, some few of those who serve her and do her honour.

So much for the dramatic aspect of the book. But it has a further technical interest to the educationist and the psychologist. Here are the records of a little community with a substantial unity and a vigorous inner life which lasted for nearly seventy years. Evans's was undoubtedly the most independent, the most famous, the most successful, in some ways the most typical of Eton houses during the greater part of its long existence. How did such a community come into being? How was it inspired and governed? Partly, no doubt, it owed its prosperity to good fortune. It had in its best period a succession of boys of high character, athletic distinction, and superabundant energy. The long line of Lyttelton brothers, to say nothing of other honoured names, made the backbone of the house; and it may be said, generally