their bars, and discover in their aviaries a thousand little pleasures invisible to eyes that have a wider range. To them, in their calm seclusion, the strifes of the battling world come softened and almost hushed; they only hear the far-off murmur of life's stormy sea, and, if their human lot dooms them to their cares, they are as transient as those of childhood.

Passing through the secluded suburbs of Cairo, I once found myself near one of the principal hareems: I paused by the dull, dark wall, over which the palm-tree waved, and the scent of flowers and the bubbling of fountains stole; and there I listened to the sweet laughter of the Odalisques within. This was broken by snatches of untaught song, to which the merry unseen band joined chorus, and kept time by clapping hands, on which their jewelled bracelets tinkled. It was a music of most merry mirth; and as I pictured to myself the gay group within, I wondered whether they deserved all that pity from their European sisters which they so little appreciate. An English lady, visiting an Odalisque, inquired what pleasure her profusion of rich ornaments could afford, as no person except her husband was ever to behold them: "and for whom," replied the fair barbarian, "do you adorn yourself? is it for other men ?"

I have conversed with several European ladies who had visited hareems, and they have all confessed their inability to convince the Eastern wives of the unhappiness or hardship of their state. It is true that the inmate of the hareem knows nothing of the advantages of the wild liberty (as it seems to her) that the European woman enjoys: she has never witnessed the domestic happiness that crowns a fashionable life, or the peace of mind and purity of heart that reward the labors of a London season; and what can she know of the disinterested affection and changeless constancy of ball-room belles, in the land where woman is all free. Let them laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and pleasantness: his wealth is hoarded for them alone; he permits himself no ostentation, except the respectable one of arms and horses; and the time is weary that he passes apart from his home and his hareem. The sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's

prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanized by his love for Emineh. In the time of the Mamelukes, criminals were led to execution blindfolded, because if they had met a woman and could touch her garment, they were saved, whatever was their crime. Thus idolized, watched, and guarded, the Egyptian woman's life is, nevertheless, entirely in the power of her lord, and her death is the inevitable penalty of his dishonor. No piquant case of crim. con. ever amuses the Egyptian public: the injured husband is his own judge and jury; his only "gentlemen of the long robe" are his eunuchs; and the dagger or the Nile the only damages. The law never interferes in these little domestic arrangements.

Poor Fatima! shrined as she was in the palace of a tyrant, the fame of her beauty stole abroad through Cairo. She was one amongst a hundred in the hareem of Abbas Pasha, a man stained with every foul and loathsome vice; and who can wonder, though many may condemn, if she listened to a daring young Albanian, who risked his life to obtain but a sight of her. Whether she did listen or not, none can ever know, but the eunuchs saw the glitter of the Arnaut's arms, as he leapt from her terrace into the Nile and vanished in the darkness. The following night, a merry English party dined together on board of Lord E- -'s boat, as it lay moored off the Isle of Rhoda; conversation had sunk into silence, as the calm night came on; a faint breeze floated perfumes from the gardens over the star-lit Nile, and scarcely moved the clouds that rose from the chibouque; a dreamy languor seemed to pervade all nature, and even the city lay hushed in deep repose-when suddenly a boat, crowded with dark figures among which arms gleamed, shot out from one of the arches of the palace; it paused under the opposite bank, where the water rushed deep and gloomily along, and for a moment a white figure glimmered amongst the boat's dark crew; there was a slight movement, and a faint splash-and then the river flowed on as merrily as if poor Fatima still sang her Georgian song to the murmur of its waters.

I was riding one evening along the banks of the Mareotis, the low land, half swamp, half desert, was level as the lake, there was no sound except the ripple of the waves along the far

extended shore, and the heavy flapping of the pelican's wings, as she rose from the water's edge. Not a palm-tree raised its plumy head, not a shrub crept along the ground; the sun was low, but there was nothing to cast a shadow over the monotonous waste, except a few Moslem tombs with their sculptured turbans: these stood apart from every sign of life, and even of their kindred dead, like those upon the Lido at Venice. As I paused to contemplate this scene of desolation, an Egyptian hurried past me with a bloody knife in his hand; his dress was mean and ragged, but his countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn; he never raised his eyes as he rushed by; and my groom, who just then came up, told me he had slain his wife, and was going to her father's village to denounce her.

My boat was moored in the little harbor of Assouan, the old Syene, the boundary between Egypt and Ethiopia; opposite, lies Elephantina, the "isle of flowers," strewed with ruins, and shaded by magnificent palm-trees; the last eddies of the cataract of the Nile foam round dark red granite cliffs, which rise precipitously from the river, and are piled into a mountain. crowned by a ruined Saracenic castle. A forest of palm-trees divides the village from the quiet shore on whose silvery sands my tent was pitched. A man in an Egyptian dress saluted me in Italian, and in a few moments was smoking my chibouque, and sipping coffee by my side: he was very handsome; but his faded cheek and sunken eye showed hardship and suffering, and he spoke in a low and humble voice. In reply to my question, as to how a person of his appearance came into this remote region, he told me that he had been lately practising as a surgeon in Alexandria; he had married a Levantine girl, whose beauty was to him as "la faccia del cielo:" he had been absent from his home, and she had betrayed him. On his return, he met her with a smiling countenance; in the evening he accompanied her to a deep well, whither she went to draw water, and, as she leant over it, he threw her in. As he said this, he paused, and placed his hands upon his ears, as if he still heard her dying shriek. He then continued: "I have fled from Alexandria till the affair is blown over: I was robbed near Siout, and have supported

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myself miserably ever since, by giving medical advice to the poor country people: I shall soon return, and all will be forgot. ten. If I had not avenged myself, her own family, you know, must have done so." And so this woman-murderer smoked on, and continued talking in a low and gentle voice till the moon was high; then he went his way, and I saw him no more.

'By the blue light in the eye of innocence," as Vivian Grey so prettily swears, I would not exchange one freely-given English heart to be lord of all the hareems in the East! no--though I write in an orange grove, with the thermometer at ninety in the shade. In the last chapter, I have stated all that I could collect in favor of the hareem system; but it is vain, even could we wish it, to attempt to make out a case in favor of a system by which man, in degrading a woman, degrades himself.

The Egyptian has no home-at least, in the English sense of that sacred word: his sons are only half brothers, and generally at enmity with each other; his daughters are transplanted while yet children into some other hareem; and his wives, when their beauty is gone by, are frequently divorced, without a cause, to make room for some younger rival. The result is, that the Egyptian-a sensualist and slave-is only fit to be a subject in what prophecy foretold his country should become "the basest of all kingdoms."

The women have all the insipidity of children, without their