more and more apparent. I lay down that night in my cabin full of regrets, it is true, but with those regrets blunted and corrected by the thought of how much I had been refreshed in mind and body, and by the retrospect of all that I had been seeing and doing. The ceaseless activity of Egyptian life almost forbade reflection, which came now as a new if a more sober pleasure. How delightful it is to let the boiling chaos of ideas wherewith you are charged settle down, and separate and take lifelike shape, and remould itself in pictures for the memory! But the digestive process is a sleepy one: instead of the feverish expectation which had visited me my first night in Egypt, came, on this my last, the soothing draught of fruition. Amid spectres of turbans, ships, camels, sheiks, banners, sphinxes, railway officers, donkeys, porters, veiled figures, tombs, and palm-trees, I went quietly and soundly to sleep, my last confused vision being of the lively capitano, who, with his countenance expanded to colossal dimensions, was pulling away at a huge cigar, shaped like a pyramid, but not smoking very successfully, and his lungs appeared to be failing, when suddenly the hadji, armed with a railway lever, having at its end a ball as big as the moon, inserted the same into the back of his head, which thereupon became an air-pump, and was exercised by the hadji until the whole delicate weed was ablaze. I forgot to tell you that we left the capitano in Egypt. I wonder if I shall ever see him again!

With morning and breakfast came the knowledge that we were likely to have a limping voyage back to Italy; for the bumping and lurching which I mentioned to you as having occurred a little before we reached Suez, had been attended with the fracture of two blades of our screw. It was now supposed that some heavy piece of iron-part of a dredging-machine perhaps had been left sticking in the bed of the Canal, and that our evil fortune had sent the screw against it. The steamer had, of course, gone back by the Canal, and from Port Saïd to Alexandria, where we found her waiting. It was not very cheering to see three or four ships drop into port all after time, and considerably tumbled, and giving sad accounts of the weather outside. We had to face whatever might betide; yet, truly, as we brought our anchor up, things looked as smooth and sunny as they had been lately looking. But the inevitable hour had struck. We had loosed from Alexandria, and were gently floating down the harbour amid the freightships and the ships of war of all nations, the shore looking unreal and purple as before, and the city and the shipping flashing back the rays of the sun. We disengaged from the anchorage, and, with more way on, still stretched out our hands to the receding coast, rich with legend and relic, and with the ineffable gramarye of old, old Time. of old, old Time. We saw the hills break into headlands, and the heavy batteries armed with cannon cast on English ground frowning down upon us as we neared the sea. And then the distance

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began to lend literally enchantment to the view. The mists gathered, but they were the haze of commingling rainbows, not murky vapours nor sullen shrouds. The lights from minaret and lattice and gilded vane still reached us through the tinted ether; and the outlines of palaces and streets and hills, glorified by distance, but distinct and warm and fair, watched over our departure and dissolved unwillingly as we were borne away. All merged at last in one soft variegated cloud. I knew not when I last distinguished an object, or when the scene became but one commixture of mellowed hues; neither could I say when the last fleck of colour waned and a grey sky spake of tempest and of travail.

Thus in soft light, like to the hue of youth, disappeared the witching pageant; thus passed Egypt from the sight of eyes that shall behold her face again no more. I am glad that I have looked on her, that I have made though but a few hasty strides on her soil, that I have exchanged fancies for realities, and that I have memories in place of dreams. And as the wind raised its first whistle through the cordage, and the first billow became crested with foam, I said farewell to her who had afforded me a few gilded days, and felt a desolation as I turned from her.

Ancient of Days, Enchantress, long- descended Queen, Farewell!

And now, Bales, it is a snorer; the white horses are tumbling about, and the good ship, as she cleaves

a billow, quakes as if in a convulsion. If anything can be sure, it is certain that she will exercise us this night. But and if she take us once more out of the boiling surge and within reach of land, then by these presents you will learn, my dear Bales, the safe return to Europe of

Yours, through good and ill,

SCAMPER.

228

CHAPTER VI.

ABOUT WHAT THE OLD EGYPTIANS KNEW.

August 1870.

PERHAPS it is true that, ever since man first found himself at large upon the earth, and commissioned to replenish and subdue it, he has been improving in wisdom and accomplishments. Interruptions more or less partial we know that there have been, when the world seemed to be going back; but these may have been only the reflux of the waves in a tide which, notwithstanding undulations, was clearly gaining ground, and majestically overspreading the strands of simplicity and ignorance. Thus the history of the world, like the history of a nation, is a record of the advance of man from the first dawn of knowledge, by a rather unsteady progression, to modern philosophy and arts and sciences; and an examination of any considerable period of time is sure to show us mankind more instructed and more capable at the end of it than at the beginning.

The above was a universal creed fifty or sixty