One other circumstance we must not forget:  that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all.  The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mohammed never could write!  Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education.  What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know.  Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books.  Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing.  The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him.  Of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul.  He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,—­alone with Nature and his own Thoughts.

But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man.  His companions named him “Al Amin, the Faithful.”  A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought.  They noted that he always meant something.  A man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter.  This is the only sort of speech worth speaking!  Through life we find him to have been regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man.  A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;—­a good laugh in him withal:  there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who cannot laugh.  One hears of Mohammed’s beauty:  his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes;—­I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was in anger:  like the “horse-shoe vein” in Scott’s Red-gauntlet.  It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear.  A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man!  Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there.

How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew:  the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors.  He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful.  He seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone.  It goes greatly against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable,