This difference in the situation of ALMORAN and HAMET, produced great
dissimilarity in their dispositions, habits, and characters; to which,
perhaps, nature might also in some degree contribute. ALMORAN was
haughty, vain, and voluptuous; HAMET was gentle, courteous, and
temperate: ALMORAN was volatile, impetuous, and irascible; HAMET was
thoughtful, patient, and forbearing. Upon the heart of HAMET also were
written the instructions of the Prophet; to his mind futurity was
present by habitual anticipation; his pleasure, his pain, his hopes, and
his fears, were perpetually referred to the Invisible and Almighty
Father of Life, by sentiments of gratitude or resignation, complacency
or confidence; so that his devotion was not periodical but constant.
But the views of ALMORAN were terminated by nearer objects: his mind was
perpetually busied in the anticipation of pleasures and honours, which
he supposed to be neither uncertain nor remote; these excited his
hopes, with a power sufficient to fix his attention; he did not look
beyond them for other objects, nor enquire how enjoyments more distant
were to be acquired; and as he supposed these to be already secured to
him by his birth, there was nothing he was solicitous to obtain as the
reward of merit, nor any thing that he considered himself to possess as
the bounty of Heaven.
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