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6 far the present sketch may go towards meeting the demand, it becomes others than the writer to judge. He has aimed to make the most judicious use of the materials before him, and from the whole mass to elicit a candid moral estimate of the character of the Founder of Islam. In one respect he may venture to assure the reader he will find the plan of the ensuing pages an improvement upon preceding Memoirs; and that is, in the careful collation of the chapters of the Koran with the events of the narrative. He will probably find the history illustrated to an unexpected extent from this source—a circumstance, which, while it serves greatly to authenticate the facts related, imparts a zest also to the tenor of the narrative scarcely to he expected from the nature of the theme.

In order to preserve the continuity of the story from being broken by incessant reference to authorities, the following catalogue is submitted, which will present at one view the principal works consulted and employed in preparing the present Life:—Sale's Koran, 2 vols.; Universal History, Mod. Series, vol. i.; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iii.; Prideaux's Life of Mahomet; Boulainvillier's do.; do. in Library of Useful Knowledge, No. 45; Bayle's Historical Dictionary, Art. Mahomet; Hottinger's Historia Orientalis: Abul-Faragii Historia Dynastarum, Pocock's Transl.; Morgan's Mahometism Explained, 2 vols.; Forster's Mahometanism Unveiled, 2 vols.; D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orien