seasons, for religious exercises. But such regular changes to the purer country air from the confined and not over-clean city, especially during the heat of summer, have been of old, and are still, a widespread custom throughout the East, for the purposes of health, retirement, or pleasure.

Perhaps in earlier years Mount Hira had a still more particular attraction for Mohammed. For it was here that the persistent Hanif Zeid, his spiritual guide and pattern, lived in banishment, after his expulsion from Mecca; and here he may have enjoyed undisturbed intercourse with Mohammed and other Meccan sympathisers, during their annual retirement from the bustle of city life, till his death. This opinion seems to be borne out by the note in which Ibn Hisham comments upon Ibn Ishak's statement that Mohammed annually retired to Mount Hira for the purpose of penance. For he observes that the word of the original translated by 'penance' (tahannuth) ought, in accordance with an Arab custom, to be pronounced with f for its final consonant (= tahannuf) and rendered by 'Hanifdom or Hanifism,' that is, 'the exercise of the true Faith,' which, with Hanifs, meant pure Deism, as opposed to the prevailing idolatry. Within the city of Mecca it was part of common propriety and good manners, especially for one so closely connected by birth with the national sanctuary as Mohammed, to conform to the practice of its polytheistic religion. Outside its precincts this yoke could be shaken off, in favour of a simple, liberal Deism, either from a sincere conviction of its superiority or as merely a more convenient substitute for the accustomed ritual observances. But it was in the interest of Islam as a religion directly revealed from heaven, for its historians to keep out of sight Mohammed's intercourse with better instructed, superior minds, like Zeid and others, to whom he stood in the relation more of a learner and pupil than of a prophet According to the teaching of Islamism, Mohammed derived his prophetic qualifications not from any human instruction, but from direct communication with the angel Gabriel, whose first apparition, as just related, is therefore of special importance and ought to be well understood.

The first part of the vision, in which Mohammed was

commanded to read, was obviously a dream; for he says himself that at its close he 'awoke.' Mohammed, knowing perfectly well that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians was affirmed to have been derived from Divine revelation, necessarily felt that he could not well present himself to the Arabs with a new Law, or a new Gospel, unless he was able to point to something like a supernatural commission. Such waking desires of great intensity not infrequently lead to dreams which seem to bring their fulfilment. Towards the middle of the present century, there lived near Cape Mount on the West coast of Africa, an interesting man, named Doalu Bukere, who, when a little boy, was taught a few Scripture passages in English, but not how to read and write, because the missionary who had taught him soon left the country. Doalu burnt with desire to learn to read and write, but lacked the opportunity. Such hold had this wish taken on his mind that at last, when he had reached the age of manhood, he, one night, had a dream in which the white teacher of his childhood appeared to him again and taught him to make a number of syllabic signs in the sand, for writing his native language. In this way he was able to form a complete syllabarium of original signs wherewith to write the Vei language: the only instance on record of negroes having invented a mode of writing of their own and applied it practically to one of their languages. Doalu described his dream as so vivid, that, on waking in the morning, he still distinctly recollected many of the signs taught him, and the very attitude assumed by his teacher in writing them for him on the sand.¹ In a manner exactly similar Mohammed declared concerning the words which he dreamt that Gabriel had taught him, 'These words stood inscribed upon my heart.' The more nervous and visionary the predisposition of the dreamer, the more impressive and vivid are his dreams and the more easily they pass into actual hallucination of the senses. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that Mohammed, as he tells us, on leaving the cave where he had dreamt, heard the voice he so much wished to hear, 'Thou art the Apostle of God;' and that, in raising his head towards