becomes one more link in the chain that is binding into one great confederation the progressive nations of the globe.

But I am forgetting that I promised to adhere to the good custom of being brief. During the next week we shall listen to many papers upon most important subjects, both in our character of economists and of statisticians. I trust we shall not only bring to all open and unprejudiced minds, but recollect the precept of the Pyrrhonists, "Be sober, and remember to doubt." Working in this spirit, we may perhaps square a stone, or shape a rafter, which some future "master of those who know" may use in building up a system of politics, which may do as much honour to the nineteenth century after, as did that of Aristotle to the fourth century before, the Christian era.

LIBRAAI

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

EGYPT.

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT CULLEN, AND PRINTED IN THE "CONTEMPORARY REVIEW" FOR FEBRUARY, 1874.

AT a quarter to one o'clock on the 16th October, the Péluse slipped from her moorings in the harbour of Marseilles, and passing slowly between the far-seen pilgrimage church of Notre Dame de la Garde and the Quarantine Station, took her course to the eastward.

Then followed a chequered week, of which the least agreeable incidents were a gale of some eight-and-twenty hours, and a night which we spent tossing about in a ground-swell off the harbour of Alexandria; while the most agreeable incidents were a lovely morning amongst the Lipari Isles, which looked more charming than I ever saw them look before, our first view of Crete, and the society of M. Mariette, one of the greatest of living Egyptologists.

Do you ask who were our other fellow-travellers? Well, they were numerous-somewhat too numerous for comfort, and you will have an excellent idea of what they were like, if you will only read the description given of his travelling companions by M. About in "Le Fellah," for that amusing writer made the same voyage in the same ship a few years ago. Only to complete the picture, in our case, a few touches from Wilhelm Meister

should be thrown in, for we had on board the whole of the personnel of the Opéra Comique, which is, I daresay, at this very moment amusing the Alexandrians.

We ran early in the morning into the harbour which Alexander, Cæsar, Antony, and so many others of the greatest actors on the world's stage have made famous, and were for some time in suspense as to our fate with reference to quarantine, that scourge of Mediterranean travel having been called into exceptional activity this year, by the presence of the cholera in various parts of Europe. Very soon, however, a boat came off, bringing a letter which informed us that kind friends had made every arrangement for our comfort, and that we should perform our quarantine in a charming yacht fitted up on purpose.

Hither we soon betook ourselves, a guardian from the Lazaretto accompanying us, and our yacht hoisting the yellow flag, as a warning to all persons to avoid touching it, to say nothing of us-its terror-striking inhabitants.

There was nothing, however, to prevent our receiving visits, provided our visitors did not actually touch the vessel, and we did receive a good many, conversing with our friends over the side.

After some seventy-two hours of close but delightful imprisonment, the quarantine authorities came to tell us that we were free. Sir John Lubbock and I immediately used our freedom by going on shore to call on Dr. Gaillardot, a French physician and man of science, who has given special attention to the Prehistoric Antiquities and the botany of Egypt.

Somewhat later in the day we all set out for a long drive to see the sights, and receive the first impressions of Alexandria.

The sights proper are only two-Cleopatra's Needle

and Pompey's Pillar. Cleopatra's Needle* is an obelisk of red granite, which is connected by the hieroglyphics still legible upon it with Rameses II., of whom we shall hear more. It was brought from Heliopolis, some say by Cleopatra, whence the name which it usually bears. Others say it was brought in the reign of Tiberius.

Pompey's Pillar is a tall column, also of granite, which has nothing to do with Pompey, but was erected in honour of Diocletian, and which, according to M. Mariette and others, stood in the centre of the Serapeium, a gigantic edifice, erected for religious, literary, and other purposes, and dedicated to Serapis.

The above are the sights proper-the sights obligatory. But not less interesting than they are the light-house, marking the place where stood the famous Pharos, whose name has become the word for lighthouse in many languages; the island of Pharos itself, long since united with the mainland; and the two great harbours-one of which, the Eunostus, or port of Good Return, bids fair to become, under the hands of English engineers, one of first-rate importance, worthy to be the gate of the Egypt of the future.

With the Alexandria of to-day, which everyone abuses, we were on the whole agreeably surprised. It would doubtless be a horrid place of residence, but the newness and strangeness of everything is pleasant to the eyes of the European traveller. We thought it in everything, except situation, far superior to Smyrna, the place with which it seemed natural to compare it.

Very charming to the eye was the variegated crowd in the streets-a crowd of all lands, all dresses, all colours, and all features. Very charming were the datepalms laden with fruit, the unfamiliar forms of the Acacia lebbek, of the true Sycomore, of a tall Tamarisk,

Sister to the one now in London (1878).

of the Bamboo, and many other trees, which were either not known to us at all, or known only in stunted specimens.

Very charming was it to taste the fresh sugar-cane for the first time, to see the brown tents of the Bedouin Arabs, and those more civilised, but hardly less strange, Dahabeeahs, which convey so many of our countrymen the Nile.

up

We slept in Alexandria, and, starting betimes in the morning, passed in little more than four hours over the one hundred and thirty-one miles which separated us from Cairo.

They were four memorable hours. First came Lake Mareotis, looking, unhappily, as unlike as possible to what Shelley had in his mind, when he wrote the lines :

But her choice sport was in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads
Egypt and Ethiopia, from the steep

Of utmost Axumé, until he spreads,
Like a calm flock of silver-fleecèd sheep,
His waters on the plain; and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

By Moris and the Mareotid lakes,

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors;
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,

Or charioteering ghastly alligators,

Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes

Of those huge forms :—within the brazen doors

Of the great labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

Looking, I say, as unlike that as possible, but still a great and historical expanse of water, with new birds, and new water-plants dear to the eye of a botanist.

Next came the surprise, which should not have been a surprise, of finding Egypt so intensely green in the