CHAPTER LI: Conquests By The Arabs .-- Part VII.
I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius.

The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of _Philoponus_ from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy.

Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in _his_ opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians--the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror.

Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic.

"If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel.