where he was in the habit of retiring " to worship the planet Saturn, and hold converse with the devil." It will not be out of place here to give some account of the tenets of the Druzes.* This remarkable sect profess to recognise but one God, without seeking to penetrate into the nature of His being and attributes; to confess that He can neither be comprehended by the senses, nor defined by language ; to believe that the Deity has manifested itself to mankind at different epochs under a human form, without participating in any of the weaknesses and imperfections of human nature ; that the last of these avatars descended upon earth in the person of El Hakem bi Amr Hlah, in whom they ceased for all time; that Hakem disappeared in the year 411 of the Hijrah (A.D. 1021), in order to put the faith of his worshippers to the test ; and that he will one day appear again, clothed in majesty and glory, to extend his empire over- the whole face of the globe, and to consummate the happiness of those who faithfully believe in him. They believe, moreover, that the Universal Intelligence is the first of God's creatures, and the immediate production of His omnipotence, and that this intelligence was incarnate in the person of Hamza ibn Ahmed during Hakem's reign ; that it is by his ministry that all other creatures have been produced; that Hamza alone possesses the knowledge of truth and of true religion, and that he communicates, directly or indirectly, but in different proportions, to the other ministers, and to the faithful themselves, that knowledge and grace which he receives from the Deity, and of which he is the sole channel ; that he alone has immediate access to the presence of God, and serves as the mediator to all other worshippers of the Supreme Being ; and that he will be, at the second advent, * The following account of the Druzes, as well as that of the • life of Hakem, is abridged from the 'Exposé de la Keligion des Druzes,' by the celebrated Orientalist, Sylvestre de Sacy.