"a learned female."* This epithet is only strictly applied to the singing women, whose music is sometimes of a very high order, and their accomplishments in other respects so numerous, that they frequently obtain fifty guineas from a party for their exhibitions on one evening. The dancing girls belong to a very inferior order, and are termed Gawázee in the language of the country. These women used to have a settlement near Cairo, and attended all the marriage and other festivities of the beau monde there. The Moollahs, or Moslem divines, however, objected to them; not on account of their impropriety, but on the plea that the profane eyes of the "Infidel" ought not to gaze upon women of the true faith. There was such an agitation raised on this subject, that the priests prevailed, and all the Almé were sent, by way of banishment, to Esneh, five hundred miles up the river, where they are allowed a small stipend by government to keep them from starvation. This reformation in the capital produced frightful results which I cannot allude to here, and Alméism still flourishes everywhere outside of the Cairene district. Sophia is said to be the leader of this tribe, who have laws, finance regulations, and peculiar blood among themselves, like the Gypsies. She was for some time in Abbas Pasha's hareem, whence she escaped, and, after many romantic vicissitudes, obtained immunity and freedom from Mehemet Ali. She is now twenty-five years old, which is equivalent to at least fifty in our own country; yet she preserves her beauty of face and form almost undiminished, and even her agility and grace.

The dance is the same with which their predecessors entertained the Pharaohs four thousand years ago, and almost every attitude we see here now is found upon the ancient tombs. It is an exercise rather of posture and acting, than of agility, and requires long practice and considerable art to arrive at perfection. The professional dress is very picturesque and graceful, consisting of a short embroidered jacket fitting close, but open in front, long loose trousers of almost transparent silk, a cashmere shawl, wrapped round the loins, rather than the waist; and light elegant turbans of muslir., embroidered with gold

Lane.

The hair flows in dark curls down the shoulders, and glitters with small gold coins; their eyes are deeply but delicately painted with kohl, which gives them a very languishing expres sion, and a profusion of showy ornaments glitter on their unveiled bosoms.

When about to commence the oriental ballet, the Almé ep. changes this for a yet lighter dress, throws off her slippers, and advances to the centre of the room with a slow step and undulat. ing form, that keeps accurate time to the music of the reed. pipe, and the castanets on which she is accompanied by her attendants. She then, after a glance round upon her audience, throws herself at once and entirely into the part she intends to act; be it pensive, gay, or tragic, she seems to know no feeling but that of the passion she represents. In some cases, a whole romance is acted; an Arab girl, for instance, she listens at the door of her tent for the sound of her lover's horse, she chides his delay; he comes, she expresses her delight; he sinks to sleep, she watches over, and dances round him; he departs, she is overwhelmed with grief. Generally the representation is more simple; the "Wasp dance" is a favorite ballet of the latter class: the actress is standing musing in a pensive posture, when a wasp is supposed to fly into her bosom-her girdle-all about her; the music becomes rapid; she flies about in terror, darting her hand in pursuit of the insect, till she finds it was all a mistake; then smiling, she expresses her pleasure and her relief in dance.

These dances are certainly not adapted for public exhibition in England, and would be considered as too expressive even at the Opera; but they display exquisite art in their fashion, and would surprise. if not please, the most fastidious critic of the coulisses.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THEBES.

Then came they forth, from that which now might seem

A gorgeous grave; through portals sculptured deep,

With imagery beautiful as dreams,

They went, and left the shades which tend on sleep,
Over its unregarded dead to keep

Their silent watch.

Then there came temples, such as mortal hand

Has never built; nor ecstasy, nor dream,

Reared in the cities of enchanted land.

SHELLEY: Revolt of Islam.

WE had scarcely reached our boat when we saw the governor of Esneh coming after us; he entreated us to drop down the river to a little distance, and then resigned himself to the delights of his pipe and our Maraschino. He said the English were the most ingenious people in the world to make such liquor (which, he thought, was brewed in London like Double X), and that the people who built Thebes were fools compared to the men who could make a drink like this. He stayed with us for about an hour, to our great inconvenience; and then departed with a bottle in his janissary's hand, and another within his own capacious girdle, that made him for the time indifferent to all the Arnaouts of Albania.

We were now en route for mighty Thebes, and grudged even the hour that was devoted to an inspection of the beautiful temple of Herment, or Hermonthis. This was built by Cleopatra, in honor of her having given birth to Cæsarion. It is richly adorned with painting and sculpture, containing every possible illustration of the "interesting event it commemorates. Mehemet Ali has used this beautiful building as a granary, for some time; and its columns and entablatures have been forced into the more active service of life, in the shape of bridges and

piers, in the same spirit in which the Pasha converted the indolent dervishes into soldiers.

We moored off Gournou, on the eastern bank of the river, towards evening, leaving the opposite side, with Luxor and Karnak, for the last. We were soon in the saddle, and, preceded by an Arab guide with a long spear, went cantering over the level plains, luxuriant with corn-fields, to the temple of Ammon, the Theban Jupiter: this building is about a mile from the river, and contained the Hall of Assembly of ancient Thebes. How curious it was, standing among those silent courts, to speculate on the species of eloquence which charmed, or persuaded the listening crowds of three thousand years ago! There was party spirit even then, no doubt, and place-hunting; where that spirit now is, who shall presume to say? but permanent places for the patriots have long since been found in the vast cemeteries that surround us. The front of this building is very perfect, and imposing, from its simplicity and vast extent. Evening fell as we stood there; obscurity, like that which wraps its records, gathered round it, and we rode back to our tent by the light of stars, which scarcely enabled us to keep clear of the mummy-pits with which the plain was honeycombed.

The next morning, at daybreak, we started for the Tombs of the Kings. I was mounted on a fine horse belonging to the sheikh of the village; and the cool air of the morning, the rich prospect before us, and cloudless sky, all conspired to impart life and pleasure to our relaxed and languid frames. I had been for nearly a month confined to my pallet by illness; and now, mounted on a gallant barb, sweeping across the desert, with the mountain breezes breathing round me, I felt a glow of spirits and an exhilaration of mind and body, to which I had been long a stranger. For a couple of hours we continued along the plain, which was partially covered with wavy corn, but flecked widely, here and there, with desert tracts. Then we entered the gloomy mountain gorges, through which the Theban monarchs passed to their tombs. Our path lay through a narrow defile, between precipitous cliffs of rubble and calcareous strata, and some large boulders of coarse conglomerate lay strewn along this desolate valley, in which no living thing of

earth or air ever met our view. The plains below may have been, perhaps, once swarming with life, and covered with palaces; but the gloomy defiles we were now traversing must have ever been, as they now are, lonely, lifeless, desolate-a fit avenue to the tombs for which we were bound.

After five or six miles' travel, our guide stopped at the base of one of the precipices, and, laying his long spear against the rock, proceeded to light his torches. There was no entrance apparent at the distance of a few yards, nor was this great tomb betrayed to the outer world by any visible aperture, until discovered by Belzoni. This extraordinary man seems to have been one of the few who have hit off in life the lot for which Nature destined them. His sepulchral instincts might have been matter of envy to the ghouls, with such unerring certainty did he guess at the places containing the embalmed corpses most worthy of his "body-snatching" energies.

We descended by a steep path into this tomb through a doorway covered with hieroglyphics, and entered a corridor, that ran some hundred yards into the mountain. It was about twenty feet square, and painted throughout most elaborately in the manner of Raphael's Loggia at the Vatican, with little inferiority of skill or coloring. The doorways were richly ornamented with figures of a larger size, and over each was the winged globe, or a huge scarabæus. In allusion probably to the wanderings of the freed spirit, almost all the larger emblems on these walls wore wings, however incompatible with their usual vocations; boats, globes, fishes, and suns, all were winged. On one of the corridors there is an allegory of the progress of the sun through the hours, painted with great detail: the God of Day sits in a boat (in compliment to the Nile, he lays aside his chariot here), and steers through the hours of day and night, each of the latter being distinguished by a star. The Nile in this, as in all other circumstances of Egyptian life, figures as the most important element; even the blessed souls, for its sake, assume the form of fishes, and swim about with angelic fins in this river of life. One gorgeous passage makes way into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent. At the base of this, perhaps four hundred feet from daylight, a doorway opens