spiration stood upon his brow: occasionally, he ceased his incantations, to inquire if the boy saw anything; and, being answered in the negative, he went on more vehemently than before. Meanwhile, the little Arab gazed on the inky globule in his hand with an eager and fascinated look, and at length exclaimed, “I see them now!" Being asked what he saw, he described a man sweeping with a brush, soldiers, a camp, and lastly the sultan. The magician desired him to call for flags, and he described several, of various colors, as coming at his call. When a red flag made its appearance, the magician said the charm was complete, and that we might call for whom we pleased. Sir Henry Hardinge was the first person asked for; and, after some seconds' delay, the boy exclaimed, "He is here!" He described him as a little man in a black dress, white cravat, and yellow (perhaps grey) hair. I asked if he had both legs. Alas! he declared he had only one. I then asked for Lord E-n. He described him as a very fine, long man, with green glass over his eyes, dressed in black, and always bending forward. I then asked for Lablache, who appeared as a little, young man, with a straw hat: the Venus de Medici represented herself as a young lady, with a bonnet and a green veil; and the boy was turned out. We then got an intelligent little negro slave, belonging to the house. The magician did not seem to like him much, but went through all the former proceedings over again; during which, the actors formed a very picturesque group; the anxious magician, with his long yellow robes; the black child, with his red tarboosh, white tunic, glittering teeth, and bead-like eyes, gazing earnestly into his dark little hand. The dragoman held a candle, whose light shone vividly on the child, the old man, and his own fine figure; his black beard and moustache contrasting well with those of the hoary necromancer, as did his blue and crimson dress with the pale drapery of the other. Picturesqueness, however, was the only result. The boy insisted that he could see nothing; though his starting eye-balls showed how anxiously he strove to do so. The hour was too late for any other boys to be found; and so the séance broke up. a most en When he was gone, I asked my dragoman, Mahmoud (who had been dragoman to Lord Prudhoe during both his visits to Egypt), what he thought of the magician. He said, he considered him rather a humbug, than otherwise; but added, that there certainly was something in it. He said, not only did Lord Prudhoe believe in the magic, but that Mrs. Lterprising traveller, whom he had once attended, had the ink put into her hand, and that she clearly saw the man with the brush, the soldiers, and the camp, though she could see no more. He told me that the people of Cairo believed the Sheikh had made a league with the "genti a basso," and that he himself believed him to be anything but a santon. A friend of mine at Alexandria said, that he knew an Englishman who had learnt the art, and practised it with success; and a lady mentioned to me that a young female friend of hers had tried the experiment, and had been so much terrified by the first apparition, that she had fainted, and could not be induced to try it again. This singular imposture, after a long success, has now been fairly denounced by Mr. Lane, the sanction of whose name first gave it its chief strength and interest.* I was not surprised to find that magnetism has its professors in Egypt, and that it had been practised from all time in this dreamy and mystical land. The climate seems particularly favorable to the development of its phenomena, and we may easily conceive what effects it must have produced on the lively imagination of this superstitious people, when it can puzzle and astonish in the midst of London. In the old time, priest and doctor were synonymous, and the work of the latter was attri buted to the influence of the former character. Their temples. were placed in smiling and lonely places, where the imagination of the patient or the proselyte was gradually prepared to receive the desired impression on their bodies or their minds, or the one was made to act upon the other. As I have mentioned before, in one of the chambers of the tombs is found a magnetizing priest under the figure of Anubis ; one of his hands is raised * See the "Englishwoman in Egypt.” above the head of the sick person, and the other is on his breast. When priestcraft began to wane in Egypt, magnetism, amongst other of its instruments, seems to have passed over into Greece, and the Pythoness, perhaps, directed the politics of the world by her revelations, when in the ecstatic state of clairvoyance. A very intelligent French physician, in the Pasha's service, whom I met upon the Nile, pointed out to me a curious passage in Plautus, which seems to imply that magnetism was not unknown to the Romans. Amphytr. sc. 1. Mercurius et Sosia. Mer. "Quod si ego illum tractim tangam ut dormiat?" Sos. "Servaveris, nam continuas has tres noctes pervigilavi." The same person told me that he believed great and extensive benefit might be produced by the use of magnetism, in Egypt particularly, where every constitution seems subject to its influences; while in France and England its action is chiefly confined to the more delicate and finer organizations of mind and body. When the brilliant but credulous minds of the Arabians began to exercise an influence in Europe, facts borrowed an energy and vitality from fancies, that made men zealous as they could never otherwise have been. Astronomy would have been too practical and abstruse for those busy and material times; but, wrapt in the robes of astrology, it was eagerly followed. Thus also chemistry prevailed through alchemy, and medicine through magic. As Avicenna, and the few Arab writers on pathology, present us chiefly with results, and the publications of those times were intended only for the initiated, the obscurity of their means can only be penetrated by conjecture, based on the causes that present similar results at present. We find that epilepsy, derangement, and many other disorders dependent on the nervous system, were cured by the Egyptian priests: yet medicine seems to have been little understood, and surgery unknown. Moral medicine, however, acted, and no doubt acts at this day, with great facility on the imaginative Arabs, predisposing them to magnetic influences. I never looked at an Oriental, seated on his little carpet, smoking his chibouque, and apparently sharing in the trance that seems to wrap all nature that surrounds him-without thinking of a magnetic séance. The long shadows of the palm are lying moveless on the grass; the very mimosa has no trembling; the river floats languidly among the lotus lilies; the pyramids look immoveable as the mountains of nature; the camels scarcely chew the cud; the sunshine itself seems sleepy; repose appears the only real plea. sure of all life. Verily this is a magnetic land! CHAPTER XVI. LIFE UPON THE NILE-MEMPHIS. Smooth went our boat along the summer seas, On either side drew its slope line of green, Peered as we passed; and Nile's soft azure hue, As thus we wandered far from sounds of care, READER! even you may some day be induced to change the feverish life of Europe, with all its perplexing enjoyments, its complicated luxuries, and its manifold cares-for the silence, simplicity, and freedom of a life on the desert and the river. Has society palled upon you? Have the week-day struggles of the world made you wish for some short sabbath of repose? Has our coarse climate chafed your lungs, and do they require the soothing of balmily breathing breezes ?-Come away to the Nile! Has love, or hate, or ambition, or any other ephemeral passion, ruffled up a storm in our butterboat of existence? Here you will find that calm counsellor Egeria, whose name is Solitude. Have the marvellous stories of the old world sunk into |