in preparation for it. The unseen world became all in all to them, and the visible world and present life of little more importance than as the necessary introduction to the higher and greater. The imagery before their eyes perpetually sustained these modes of thought. Everywhere they had in presence the symbols of the worlds of death and life ;-the limited scene of production, activity and change :-the valley with its verdure, its floods, and its busy multitudes, who were all incessantly passing away, to be succeeded by their like; while, as a boundary to this scene of life, lay the region of death, to their view unlimited, and everlastingly silent to the human ear. Their imagery of death was wholly suggested by the scenery of their abode. Our exception of this is much injured by our having been familiarised with it first through the ignorance and vulgarised Greek adoption of it, in their imagery of Charon, Styx, Cerberus, and Rhadamanthus ; but if we can forget these, and look upon the older records with fresh eyes, it is inexpressibly interesting to contemplate thesymbolical representations of death by the oldest of the Egyptians, before Greek or Persian was heard of in the world; the passage of the dead across the river or lake of the valley, attended by the conductor of souls, the god Anubis; the formidable dog, the guardian of the mansion of Osiris (or the divine abode); the balance in which the heart or deeds of the deceased are weighed against the symbol of integrity; the infant Harpocrates-the emblem of a new life, seated before the throne of the judge; the range of assessors who are to pronounce on the life of the being come up to judgment; and finally the judge bimself, whose suspended sceptre is to give the sign of acceptance or condemnation. Here the deceased has crossed the living valley and river; and in the caves of the death region, where the howl of the wild dog is heard by night, is this process of judgment going forward; and none but those who have seen the contrasts of the region with their own eyes,-none who have received the idea through the borrowed imagery of the Greeks, or the traditions of any other people,-can have any adequate notion how the mortuary ideas of the primitive Egyptians, and, through them, of the civilised world at large, have been originated by the everlasting conflict of the Nile and the Desert.

We should have liked to have transferred to our pages the contemplations upon the antiquity of Thebes, but have only room to add that Miss Martineau's arguments against the possibility of the paintings in the caves of Benee Hasan being the representation of the arrival of Joseph's brethren, are, notwithstanding our strong prepossessions on the subject, too forcible to be hastily rejected.

"for

Returned to Cairo, the past with all its mysteries had to give way to the present with all its inconsistencies. Painted tombs were exchanged for streets and bazaars, pyramids for mosques, and a nation in the abstract -a people only living in the ideas they have bequeathed to us-for actual society in Cairo. Miss Martineau's good spirits accompanied her in the change. "There are few gayer things in life," she says, one who chooses to be gay, than a visit to Cairo. There is nothing so wonderful and romantic in the whole social world as an Arabian city and Cairo is the queen of Arabian cities." She was lucky also in her time, for she was present at the fête of the birth of the prophet, and witnessed the return of Mahhmil. Through the kindness of Mrs. Arden, Miss Martineau was also enabled to see that great feature of Eastern life-the hareem. "If we are to look for a hell on earth," says Miss Martineau, "it is where polygamy exists ;" and yet the very first thing she witnessed on examining into the working of the institution was in its favour. It was a chief lady, ill and miserable from grief, for the loss of a baby belonging to a white girl in the hareem! The impression received by both the English ladies was pretty nearly the same. Of the women met with in

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this state, Mrs. Arden says pointedly enough. "Lovely mystery! one eye; nose, cheeks, and chin beautifully tattooed; the countenance devoid of intelligence, coarse in expression." Again, of ladies of higher rank, the same lady, who had access to many hareems, says, During my stay in Egypt I never saw one beautiful woman, nor even one that would attract common attention in a ball-room in England. I saw only some less ugly than others, whether Turkish, Circassian, Syrian, Arab, Nubian, or Abyssinian; indeed the finest person altogether amongst the hundred chosen ones that I have seen was an Abyssinian; she was black as jet, about five feet six inches in height, a most lovely figure and good face, and to complete her very striking appearance, dressed in black entirely; the girdle above the hips only being of gold. She was very like a handsome demon wanting the tail."

We saw, I think (says Miss Martineau) about twenty more women,-some slaves, most or all young, some good-looking, but none handsome. Some few were black, and the rest very light-Nubians or Abyssinians and Circassians, no doubt. One of the best figures, as a picture, in the hareem, was a Nubian girl, in an amber-coloured watered silk, embroidered with black, looped up in festoons, and finished with a black boddice. The richness of the gay-printed cotton skirts and sleeves surprised us; the finest shawls could hardly have looked better. One graceful girl had her pretty figure well shown by a tightfitting black dress. Their heads were dressed much like the chief lady's. Two, who must have been sisters, if not twins, had patches between the eyes. One handmaid was barefoot, and several were without shoes. Though there were none of the whole large number who could be called particularly pretty individually, the scene was, on the whole, exceedingly striking as the realisation of what one knew before but as in a dream.

Monckton Milnes tells us in his "Palm Leaves" that even to dream of the beauty hid within a hareem is forbidden

As each Muslim his hareem
Guards even from a jealous dream;

but English ladies would drive even the wish to dream from its haunting place with Miss Martineau especially, all Eastern ladies were "dull, soulless, brutish, or peevish." She stigmatises polygamy as degrading and revolting, and her denunciation of this abominable conventionalism, for it is not a phase of primitive manners, is well merited.

There is one subject more before we leave Cairo. Miss Martineau saw there the oft-talked-of magician. All his experiments were failurestotal and ludicrous failures, she says;-but notwithstanding this, her opinion was (and she was well qualified by her own mesmeric susceptibility to give one) that it is an affair of mesmerism, but that this old man himself probably does not know it. "I am disposed to think," she says, "that there was originally no imposture about the matter at all; that the magician did not then understand the causes of his success, and does not now understand the causes of his failures. If he continues to take fees without hope of success of course he is an impostor; but if he believes that his success or failure depends on the pleasure of spirits whom he propitiates, he may be always hoping for success, and may think it wrong to refuse the chance.

"In travelling from the Nile to Mount Sinai," says Miss Martineau, "the chief interest is in following the track of the Israelites; and the person one thinks most of is Moses." Pity, this being the case, that

travellers do not possess themselves of more accurate information regarding the ancient configuration of the country before they launch forth in wild and groundless speculations upon this important question. Miss Martineau speaks upon this point with a well-timed distrust.

I have no wish to prove that in the first instance we followed the Hebrew track. Most of our party, I believe, were convinced that we did: and among those so convinced, was the clergyman. I do not see that sufficient evidence exists to give even a preponderance of probability, and I have therefore no opinion on the subject. When once on the other side of the Gulf of Suez, the route is, for the most part, clear enough. The doubt is between two routes from the Nile to the Red Sea; that by which travellers now go straight from Cairo to Suez, and the more southerly one, called Wadee-el-Tiheh, the Valley of the Wandering. This name shows which way tradition points out.

Hahirath,

Nothing is more certain, than that in the time of the Exodus, the Red Sea had a much more northerly extent than it has at present. afterwards Heroopolis, was situated upon a gulf of the same name more extensive than that of Suez, and now only lake and marsh or dry land. At the same period, there existed another and an eastern arm of the Nile, which flowed through the valley of the ancient Red Sea's canal, and through the Crocodile lakes to the sea. There was further a line of cities, situated along the banks of this canal which can be identified with the recorded outward route of the Hebrew host. This line of country is remote from either of the two routes with which Miss Martineau considered the doubt to lay. How the gulf of Heroopolis came to be separated from the sea is recorded at length in Isaiah xi., 15.

Travelling in the desert, like travelling on the Nile, has undergone great changes in modern times. It forces an involuntary smile to read of a repast of which butter from Ireland, ale from England, wine from Spain, ham from Germany, bread and mutton from Cairo and Suez, cheese from Holland, and water from Madras, formed a part; having been indulged in among the dreary sands at the wells of Moses; and we spitefully long for when these luxuries shall be exchanged for the tender cares of the redoubtable Sheikh Hussein. Luckily, however, the party were accompanied by a Mr. G- who so tamed the lion of the desert, that he was convinced that he (Mr. G- -) was the greatest man in Europe. On the way from Sinai to Akaba, the party were enabled to follow a different route from that taken by Burckhardt, Laborde, and Dr. Robinson, and Miss Martineau speaks in ecstasies of two valleys, which they met with on this new route-Wadee-el-Ain and Wadee Weteer. Of the first she says, "We all knew Switzerland; and we all agreed that not even there had we seen any thing so magnificent as this Wadeeel-Ain-the Valley of the Spring." But these were 66 Alps stripped naked," while the gorge of Wadee Weteer was clothed with vegetation, chiefly tamarisks and asphodel-and the effect, the white sand underfoot, the verdure skirting the mountains, and the precipitous rocks of a rich red hue, rising so as to narrow the sky, and to lessen the glare to a pleasant light, was such as to fill the party with delight.

The description of Petra is animated, but Miss Martineau is no longer so enthusiastic as when among the monuments of Egypt. This is still more particularly the case as she advances into Palestine and Syria. It is quite evident that Syria and the Holy Land ought to be visited before the Nile. The impression communicated by the immensity of the Egyp

June.-VOL. LXXXIII. No. CCCXXX.

R

tian monuments overshadows almost every thing in the East. A curious circumstance that occurred while the party were at the rock city, shows of what great importance it is to let no opportunity escape of bringing home correct copies of inscriptions. On the 22nd of March the whole of a façade near the Kashne, which contained one of the few remaining and uncopied Greek inscriptions at Petra, fell down bodily, and the far-famed work is now gone for ever. Notwithstanding the change that time is effecting, the researches of the party, which were carried on for some days, notwithstanding Sheikh Hussein's customary tricks, attest that there is still much to be done at Petra.

Miss Martineau is herself, for a moment again, at Jerusalem.

I can scarcely remember the time when I did not know familiarly all its hills, and its gates, and its temple courts, so as to read the New Testament as with a plan in my head. But I never had the slightest conception of that beauty which now at once enabled me to enter into the exultation of David, and the mourning of Nehemiah, and the generous concern of Titus, and the pride of the Saracen, and the enthusiasm of the Crusader. The mournful love of the Holy City grew from day to day, as I became familiar with its precincts; but no single view so took me by surprise as that which we obtained in the course of our walk this first day.

There is a strange charm in the mere streets, from the picturesque character of the walls and archways. The old walls of yellow stone are so beautifully tufted with weeds, that one longs to paint every angle and projection, with its mellow colouring, and dangling and trailing garlands. And the shadowy archways, where the vaulted roofs intersect each other, till they are lost in the dazzle of the sunshine beyond, are like a noble dream.

With regard to the English mission she speaks most unfavourably, both of its progress and prospects. In the first place, none but the weak, the ignorant, or the needy and immoral are, she says, converted. In the second, as the converts become outcasts from their own people, they must be maintained by those who have converted them. When once the mission becomes an alms-house affair before the eyes of the city-a city full of Mohammedans and Jews who already regard the Protestant Christians with utter contempt-there is an end to all hope of converting any but the alms-house order of people-the needy and the lazy. "While we have millions of savages in our own island," says Miss Martineau, "heathens without heathen gods, I cannot see why we should spend on a handful of strangers, who have already a noble faith of their own, the resources which would support home missions to a much greater extent. Time will show: but my own persuasion is that the Jerusalem mission cannot, from errors inherent in its very conception, long endure." The passage in italics is not so in the original, we mark it out to leave the responsibility with its author. There are visits to Jericho and to the Dead Sea; to Cana, Tiberias, and the Upper Valley of the Jordan, and a journey to Damascus and Baalbeck, and return by the Cedars of the Lebanon. But we have followed our intellectual guide as far as our space will permit us, and shall merely remark that, having no Mr. Lane to guide her in Syria, she has given up her previous system of nomenclature, according to which, for example, Ain Fijji should have been Ain Feejjee.

THE RICHEST COMMONER IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DISAPPOINTMENT.

THE last chapter left Moley and the Richest Commoner at the Dooey door in Belvedere Terrace. The assiduous reader will perhaps remember that Charles Summerley was anxious to encounter his dear mother-inlaw on the instant, and had only been dissuaded, and adjourned until the next morning at ten, on the strength of Moley's considerate representation that the sudden announcement of the honour he intended them might be too much for the old lady.

The real fact, however, was, that they dined at two o'clocknay, don't blush, fair reader, and throw the book up in disgust at the idea of reading about such vulgarians; you all do much the same thing under the name of luncheon, and not repeating the farce later on in the day, was owing to old Dooey's absence in town, and the ladies substituting a good substantial tea instead. Mrs. Dooey being much troubled with some flatulent complaint, which would not yield even to Holloway's pills, all-powerful as they are, generally wound up at bedtime with a good stiff glass of something and water, the colour being that of beer, though the smell was that of brandy. That, however, is neither here nor there. The point we wish to explain to the reader is, that within ten minutes of the time of the Richest Commoner giving his stunning rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tan at the Dooey door, as he escorted Miss Dooey home, that fair but carnivorous young lady was to assist in an onslaught on a great piece of roast beef, before it descended to the servants. Now, as Lord Byron well said, "nobody likes to be disturbed at love or meals," and Mrs. Dooey only indulging in the former amusement as a participator in the "second degree," she was most peremptory in insisting upon not being interrupted in her enjoyment of her meals, and her orders to the young ladies were most strict not to let their men on any account interfere with the food. Indeed, she went so far as generally to establish a small milliner or dressmaker-if possible, one without a show-room-at whose door the young ladies could choke off their beaux, just as London exquisites do their country friends at clubs. "Oh, you don't belong to 'Brookes,' don't ?" or, not a member of the Travellers'?' well, then, I'll say good-bye for the present; I hope we shall meet again soon;" with which well-told white lie (hoping quite the contrary), the clubite enters his sanctuary, and going to a window, enjoys the sight of his friend looming off in the distance, down St. James's Street or along Pall Mall. So the Miss Dooeys, at the last moment, would make for the brass-plated door, "Madame Snooks, Milliner and Dressmaker, from London," and as the catch responded to the pull of the second-floor bell, would bow or shake off their acquaintances, and ascending the dark, twisting staircase, would finally disappoint the hope their presence had raised, by ordering a yard and a half of tape, or some such expensive article. Then, the coast

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