Thus, one
who was with Fuad Pasha, the most European of Ottoman diplomatists, in
his last days at Nice, assures me that his whole time was spent in a
recitation of the Koran, learning it by heart. Another, who was called
the Voltaire of Islam, performed his prayers and prostrations with
scrupulous regularity whenever he found himself in private; and a
third, equally notorious as a sceptic, died of religious mania. All,
too, who have mingled much with Mussulmans, must have been struck with
the profound resignation with which even thoughtless and irreligious men
bear the ills of life, and the fortitude with which they usually meet
their end--with the large proportion that they see of men who habitually
pray and fast, and who on occasion, at great risk and sacrifice, make
the pilgrimage, and with the general absence of profanity, and the fact
that an avowal of religion is never proffered apologetically as with us,
nor met in any society with derision. These things are, perhaps, not in
themselves evidence of belief, for hypocrites have everywhere their
reward, but the fact even of hypocrisy proves the general spirit to be
one of avowed belief.
The truly devout are doubtless rare, but where we find them it is
evident that their belief pervades their lives in as strict a sense as
it does devout persons among ourselves.
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