vet saddle, and a gaily ornamented bridle. A servant, in blue shirt and red slippers, walks before him, calling out to the pas sengers to clear the way, and another follows with his pipe.

Thus he proceeds to visit, or transact his business, or sit crosslegged in his shop, or to take a bath at the public hamma'ams; all of which proceedings involve constant use of his pipe. At noon, he washes his hands and dines: if very affable, he admits his wives to his table, or, to speak more correctly, to his tray; but, for the most part, he feeds alone. There are no knives, forks, or napkins; he helps himself with his fingers, and, if he wishes to honor a guest, he serves him in the same manner: here are thin cakes of bread set before the diner, with which he may dip in the dish, and fish up such morsels as he is lucky enough to catch. There is generally a soup, then a number of little bowls, with bits of stewed meat, boiled cucumbers, rissoles of rice wrapped in vine-leaves, mince-meat wrapped in cabbage, or little bits of lamb or mutton roasted on skewers, and called kabobs. A boned fowl, stuffed with every variety of fruit and vegetable, from raisins to parsley; a lamb, stuffed with pistachio-nuts, or a roast fowl, are common dishes; fish, swimming in rancid butter; sweetmeats, set off with honey; and a large dish of plain boiled rice, conclude the entertainment. Then follows sherbet of water, flavored with bruised raisins and roses, or a water-melon in its stead. Ablutions precede and follow every meal, nor is grace before and after meat ever forgotten. After dinner, he retires to his hareem, where he takes his pipe and coffee, while his wife rubs the soles of his unslippered feet, or sings him to sleep with a low, monotonous song. Afternoon prayer-time recalls him to existence, and, between prayers, and pipes, and supper, he gets through the rest of the day without much difficulty. Sometimes he passes his evening with a game of draughts or chess, or a little lazy chat. Nine o'clock finds him generally retired for the night, or wending his way through the silent streets, preceded by a slave with a lantern.* The hour of rest arrived, the rich man lies down on his cotton mat

Any person found after dark, without being thus illuminated, is arrested Dy the police, and probably bastinadoed in the morning.

tress, which is spread on a slight wooden frame; his servants sleep on the ground, generally in some of the passages; and the houseless, whether from poverty or from desert habits, lie down in the street, wherever darkness overtakes them.

I have dwelt thus long on the incidents and character of Egyptian life, as it concerns us not a little politically as well as otherwise. The relations of his country are becoming daily more involved with those of England, and it concerns us not a little how he lives, acts, and feels towards his present government. See him reduced from man's proud estate--divested of all inte rest in the land which is but farmed by a foreign adventurer— excluded from all share in politics-without a ray of freedom. to light him onward through thought to action. Within the precincts of his hareem alone he feels himself a man, and there all his thoughts and ambition dwell imprisoned: he dares not mount a horse, lest it should draw upon him the attention of the taxgatherer or his spies: the descendant of the desert chieftain betakes himself to a donkey, and goes forth to his counter, his only business or squats in a gloomy coffee-house, his only place of public resort. There he sits and smokes, with downcast eyes, unless the voice of the story-telier strikes upon some chord of fancy not yet quite numbed; and, in the adventures of his forefathers, he is made to feel an interest that nothing in his own dull life can waken. Can this man's fate be worse-can invasion, or change of government, bring additional suffering or humiliation upon this fallen race?

The Turks, or Osmanlis, are of small number, but high consideration, in Egypt. They are to the Arabs what the Normans were to the Irish five hundred years ago-a proud, privileged class, without a sympathy for their vassals, except such as their religion may impose. They are, for the most, ignorant of Arabic, considering it derogatory to learn the language of a conquered race. Endowed with an instinct and power of command, in which the Egyptian is utterly deficient, they occupy all posts of trust throughout the Pasha's provinces. They are also less avaricious than the Egyptians who are placed in authority; and, though equally lax in their ideas of justice, they seldom exer

cise the same grinding oppression that the Arab inflicts upon his fellow-countrymen when in his power.

The Turk is vain, ignorant, presumptuous, and authoritative (I speak of the governors and officers, who are the only Osmanlis of Egypt of whom I have had any experience); yet in society he is courteous, affable, and gentlemanlike. He never, or very rarely, intermarries with Egyptians; and, as it is a well-known fact that children, born of other women in this country, rapidly degenerate or die, there are few instances of indigenous Turks in Egypt. Through the long reign of the Mamelukes, there was not one instance, I believe, of a son succeeding to his father's power and possessions. The Mamelukes were young Georgian or Circassian slaves, adopted by their owners, and adopting others in their turn; this dynasty of foundlings ruled for many years in the land of the Pharaohs, and is now extinct: some few survived the massacre under Mehemet Ali, but they have died gradually away. When I arrived, the last of them was to be seen at Alexandria, with snow-white beard and bended form, but an eye that, in extreme old age, retained all its youthful fire. This last of a persecuting and persecuted race is now at rest, with a turban carved in stone above his tomb.

* Mehemet Ali's large family would appear to be a remarkable exception. Ibrahim, however, is of European birth, and the others form slight exception to the rule of degeneracy.

CHAPTER XIII.

MAHOMET, AND HIS CREED.

While God was uttering through his lip, and writing with his pen,
Mahommed took his lot with us, a man with other men:
And thus, in our due love to him, and awe for God alone,
We bless his memory as the chest that holds the precious stone.

Imposteur à la Mecque, mais Prophète à Médine.

MILNES.

VOLTAIRE.

EL ISLAM signifies "resignation," and is the Moslem expression for the Mahometan faith; the exposition of its principles could not have found one more appropriate. I am not about to enter upon any dry theological discussions, but the whole character of Eastern life is so strongly impregnated by Islamism, that a glance at this faith and its extraordinary founder seems unavoidable.

The star-worship of old times was surely the most natural belief to which the wandering soul could cling. It first revealed itself in those unclouded climes where the host of heaven is ever visible. The planets especially appeared to preside over Earth's fluctuating fates, and to each was allotted some peculiar ministry by this lofty superstition. The priests were also astrologers; when their influence had passed away, the book in which they read-its page the sky, its letters stars-remained still open, and was still devoutly gazed on. To this moment, an instinct of this faith lingers among the people of the desert, who attribute the rising of the Nile to one-the falling of the miraculous drop that cures the plague and blesses the year to another star-their human destiny to the combination of the host of heaven and who can tell how often and how deeply the lonely wanderer has been cheered by the belief that these eyes of heaven were

watching over his desert path! Nor are such superstitions confined to the Oriental; all those who pass much time under an open midnight sky admit its influence. The sailors who first ventured into the Pacific Ocean observed that a constellation, new to them, was shining over the softened sea like the presence of Him who preached peace to the tempest-tossed the constellation was in the form of a cross, and the mariners no longer marvelled that the sea was still. Our own language bears testimony to the hold that astrology obtained amongst our language. makers; and the expression of a "jovial disposition," a "saturnine" or "martial" look, describes those whom Eastern superstition, grafted on Northern credulity, believed to be born under the "aspect" of those planets.

Sabaism was the religion of the Arabians when Mahomet appeared. This religious science, that had been cultivated at Babylon, was carefully preserved by those who had nightly experience of its visions, and found utility realizing their abstract faith. If eternity was written in the empyrean, and incorruptibility in the stars, the former was also their harvest-giver, for the Arab proverb says, "Behold, fertility is in the clouds of the sky, not in the clods of the earth!" By the stars they steered their "ships of the desert" along the trackless wastes; and, by the position of the other planets, traced the movement of their own through spring and harvest.

Upon this star-worship was grafted a wild, vague mythology, that expressed itself in idols: this must have been a very complicated theology, for we find Mahomet, in one iconoclasm, destroying three hundred and sixty of its stony saints that had occupied the temple of the Caaba in peace till then.* This temple was in existence before the Christian era, and contained the black stone that fell from Heaven, on which Jacob dreamed! Scattered among the Sabeans were many Christians and Jews; the latter principally emigrants from Syria when under the scourge of Titus the avenger; the former, the converts of the Jacobite and Nestorian bishops. The professors of these two creeds bore the name of the "People of the Book," or of the

Some say there were only two idols here, Abraham and Nimrod.