been renewed after every revival of it, shows us its inability to meet and answer the wants of our human nature. Life is too broad and complex for the narrow and simple theories of the universe, which for the time seem to carry men away as with a flood. The world is not a barracks nor a camp, and cannot be turned permanently into either. The decay of military zeal under the later Caliphs clothed itself in forms the most orthodox and proper in seeming, but none the less utterly alien to the spirit of Islam. The Koran, for instance, the great text-book of the faithful, began to be studied as a work of literary art, instead of being regarded as a collection of General Orders to the armies of the Faithful; and out of the study grew a great body of Arab literature, as men gradually passed on to the study of other topics connected with the Koran in a secondary or even more remote way. Then, too, their reverence for the Prophet, a sentiment always tolerated and even commanded to the Moslem, began to take shapes which really and greatly interfered with the popular devotion to Allah as the One object of worship, before whom all the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing

Mohammed's tomb, those of his family and of the other great saints and heroes of Islam, became favorite places of worship; then came prayers and offerings for intercession and the like, until the religion which began by repudiating all mediators, was saddled with thousands.

Another change grew out of and accelerated the decay of zeal. Outside the limits of one heretical sect, the existence of a living priesthood, a class of men officially designated as intercessors between the people and God, remained utterly unknown to the Mohammedan world. On the other hand, the civil rulers of Islam proved no less detrimental to the purity of the popular conceptions. Mohammedan government naturally takes the shape of a despotic democracy like that of Diocletian, Napoleon, and Alexander the Second. Nowhere is there such democratic equality as under a strong despot, and Douglas Jerrold has well compared the system to "frogs under a flag-stone." But with the decay of zeal, the political coherence of the Islamitic empire diminished, and the supreme and unquestioned authority of the Caliph no longer reflected the solitary and undivided rule of Allah over the sons of men. In every corner of Africa and Asia, the lieutenants were establishing new and independent dynasties, and the old national boundary lines,

which Islam was supposed to have effaced, reappeared as the deluge. subsided. And within each of these new kingdoms the principle of hereditary right was conceded or asserted with reference to every class or dignity of officials. Democratic equality was utterly obliterated, and its disappearance reacted upon the popular mind. For it was to the devout Moslem the sacramental sign of the great truth that with God there is no respect of persons. But the political tendencies inherent in human nature were here also too strong for Islam.

And we shall see that every attempt at reform and the revival of orthodox zeal, if made on the lines indicated by the Koran, has always begun by the abolition of every sort of local hereditary dignity, and by the substitution of officials appointed by the Caliph or Imam who represents the supreme authority of Allah. It is easy to charge these changes to the selfishness of the ruler, or to show how they abolish the only form of constitutional restraint known to Mohammedan government; but it is none the less true that the logic of the creed and that of the situation both demand them. Therefore it is that Mohammedan rule, if at all vigorous, is the most intolerable of despotisms; because it excludes the very possibility of orders and gradations in society, and requires that all shall be simply the subjects of the one will, and shall hold all places and all rights at its good pleasure and apart from hereditary rank and privilege. In an army this is tolerable; the soldier is brought into a personal relation to his general, and submits to the necessity of war. He can, and generally does, feel a true and hearty affection for the man who holds his life at disposal, but who is daily visible to the rank and file, and addresses his words of exhortation and encouragement to them. Therefore it is that war is more tolerable than peace to the true Moslem; and for this reason also the system works grandly while men's spirits are kept at white heat. But a Mohammedan government at peace, and especially when busy at reforms, that is, in carrying out its own ideal of rule, and waging war upon all the results of the struggle of human nature against its rigidity, is the most crushing and exhausting of all despotisms.

Apart from these general sources of decay in zeal, and others similar to them, great harm was done to the cause by the schism which rent Islam in two, and which still perpetuates itself. Sonneeism, as Gib

bon says, commends itself to the impartial critic as Mohammedan orthodoxy, but for other reasons besides those he gives. The Shiayee sect of Persia, and of some small districts outside it, is in truth a revolt against the one-sidedness of Islam itself, and especially against its masculinity. Such a revolt was foreshadowed by the rise and spread of the Sufee mysticism and of monasticism. The first and greatest of the Sufee saints was a woman, an Oriental Madame Guyon named Rabia, who died A. H. 135. Upon the most emotionless and unfeminine of religions, she and her successors engrafted a practical theology in which emotion is everything, and outward observance or distinctive dogma nothing. Although the prophet had laid his express prohibition upon every approach to monastic organization and every sort of voluntary asceticism, myriads of his followers assumed the monastic garb or "put on the wool" (Suf, hence Sufi), and rivalled the devotees of Christendom and Buddhism in the severity of their self-mortification. And while Mohammed in his reaction from a Pagan anthropomorphism had proclaimed the existence of a great and impassable gulph between Allah and humanity, and had declared sherk (or association, i. e. the giving the creature any share in the attributes or the glory of the Creator) the most deadly of all sins, this new school trod the path of mystical self-denial and absorption in the divine, until in the teachings of Bustamee all distinction between Allah and the devotee disappears, and the Sufee attains deification.

Persia is a congenial soil for mystical growths, and here especially Sufeeism and Dervishism have always flourished. Not that the Shiayee is always or necessarily a mystic, but his creed has a tendency to mysticism, and when he is a zealot, his zeal takes this shape. As is well known, Ali and his house are the prime objects of Persian regard, and while the Sonnee veils his devotion to the Prophet under qualified and theistic phrases, the Shiayee devotion to the Prophet's nephew and vizier hardly stops at anything. Some of the Shiayee sects even regard Ali as a divine emanation or incarnation of Allah, and speak of him as creating Mohammed, and filling him with the prophetic spirit. Incarnations and emanations, the very nehushtan of orthodox Moslem theology, abound in the history of the Shiayee sects, one of which, the Carmathians, captured and desecrated the holy city itself, and trampled under foot the things held most sacred by every true believer. The Carmathians are a rare instance of

military zeal among the Shiayees; another is the sect founded by Mohanna in southern Bokhara. As a rule the sensual disciple of Ali prefers less manly ways of reaching his ends, and the dread name of the Assassins still tells us the character of Shiayee warfare.

The Sonnees have their sects also, four of them recognized and well established variations within the limits of orthodoxy, dating from the second century of the Hejira. The most zealous and rigid, and at the same time the freest from every sort of fetich superstition, are the Hanbalee sect, which prevails in Central Arabia, and in some parts of Africa and Syria. Next comes the Maleekee sect, which is affiliated in some degree with the first, and whose doctors are to be met at Damascus and Meccah. The Shafee'.ee sect is less severe and more superstitious than either, but is surpassed in both respects by the Hanafees, to whom the Turks give their adherence. The last three are represented by Muftees, who reside at Meccah. Their differences, beyond the points already specified, are chiefly in matters of slight observance, such as the posture of the hands in prayer. But to the Hanbalees a special historical importance belongs, as from their midst has proceeded the great modern revival of Moslem zeal, an account of which and of the similar movement among the Shiayees will occupy our second paper.

ROBT. ELLIS THOMPSON.

EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN FORESTRY.—III.

WE have shown

(Concluding Paper.)

E have shown beyond the need of more ample demonstration that our woodland surface is diminishing with far greater rapidity than the material interests of the new century we have entered upon will allow, and the suggestions we have to offer in behalf of a restoration of the forest, though not strictly original, will undoubtedly be accepted when the time for their application shall have reached us.

Most writers who have recently drawn our attention to the subject of the consumption of wood, and waste of this useful material, have referred to fencing in the United States, and shown the needless

demand it makes upon our forests. As the nation swells in numbers, and farms multiply into millions, it will be an utter impossibility to find the means of inclosing them, and various expedients will follow our new situation. Among the earliest reforms in aid of this cause, a general legislative movement restricting the indiscriminate roaming of cattle, and the passage of the salutary law proscribing their freedom, and denying the right of one man to turn out his herds upon his neighbor's domain, will be found imperative; a simple result of order and good government all over the civilized earth. In the absence of timber, one of the earliest resources will be found in hedging, for which purpose the Osage orange, honey locust and japonica are now in most general use. All the agricultural journals are filled with directions for their culture, and we refer to them for further information as to the planting and treatment of these and all other species of thorned shrubbery. Although the hedge, as one of the enjoyable embellishments of the rural picture, is certainly desirable and destined at an early day to come into general favor, yet we believe that well matured wood will remain the approved material for fencing, although new plans of economy will be found requisite in the division and redivision and inclosure of the fields of the farm. Every one hundred acres require from 12,000 to 15,000 rails each, and in looking over a small expanse of country we discover at least two or three millions of rails employed for their protection. All of this wooden material is fast falling to decay; and in contemplating these flourishing and well guarded improvements, we search in vain for the new material that is to replace the perished and crumbled fences. There are no woods in sight, and mountain timber is far off; so that there is no resource for the farmer but to start a new growth of timber that shall come forward and mature in time for a renewal of his inclosures.

A large portion of our farms in our older settlements is entirely bereft of timber, and, as most appropriate for the purpose, chestnut in small lots of from five to ten acres could easily be propagated, and furnish an exhaustless supply of durable wood for the purposes in question. Thus far the propagation of chestnut in rich productive soil would have proved an unprofitable investment, as the market for this and other woods has been well supplied; but when we scan the future of our forests and reflect on what we have just reviewed of their inevitable destiny, we shall be able to realize the com