in modern history, is a name given by the Mahomedans to those females who are designed for the faithful in Paradise. These are not the same as those with whom they had lived on earth, but are formed for this purpose with singular beauty and undecaying charms. Islamism is not more distinguished from Christianity by its inherent character than by the rewards which it holds out to its faithful votaries. The latter is the religion of a civilized people, and is entirely spiritual: the reward which Jesus promises to the elect is that they shall see God face to face. In the Christian religion, therefore, every thing tends to mortify the senses, nothing to excite them. Islamism, on the contrary, is the religion of a people in the infancy of civilisation; it arose in a poor country, destitute of the necessaries of life, amongst a people fierce and warlike, who were incapable of being addressed through the medium of their understandings. Mahomed therefore appealed to the senses. He promised his followers odoriferous baths, rivers of milk; fair black-eyed hours, and groves of perpetual shade. The Arab, thirsting for water, and parched by a burning sun, sighed for shade and coolness, and was ready to do anything for such a recompense. The religion of Mahomed may consequently be said to be a religion of promise; it appeals to the senses, it addresses the passions, it holds out the prospect of revelling in those pleasures which are most desired and pursued by men in whom the merely sensual predominates over the intellectual part of their nature. But Christianity, which sprung from a purer source, considered the rewards of a future life as insufficient to repress the vices, disorders, and crimes, which spring from the passions, and, superadding to its precepts a penal sanction, may justly be said to be a religion of menace. From these general principles may be deduced the opposite characters of the two religions; the one appealing only to the senses and the passions; the other addressing itself to the minds and consciences of mankind, and having for its grand object to reform, not to debase society.