ence.

The others do not seem serenely superior

to that experience, like the Egyptian Colossi, but simply soulless. The beautiful story of Clytie is felt through her face. For when Apollo deserted her for Leucotnoë, she revealed his love to the father of her rival. But Apollo only despised her the more, and the sad Clytie drooped and died into the heliotrope, or sun-flower, still forever turning toward the sun. Nor less fair the fate of her rival, who was buried alive by her father; and love-lorn Apollo, unable to save her, sprinkled nectar and ambrosia upon her grave, which reached her body, and changed it into a beautiful tree, that bears the frankincense. How well sound these stories at Erment, while we remember Cleopatra, and look upon her likeness!

The very departure from the ordinary laws of sculptured beauty only suggests that loftier and more alluring, where the soul suffuses the features. And this being ever the most intimate and profound beauty, the queenly charm spread from the face as we looked, and permeated the whole person. Cleopatra stands in imagination now, not a beautiful brunette merely, but a mysteriously fascinating wo"My serpent of old Nile," was a truth of

man.

the lover's tongue.

Roman and man as Julius Cæsar was, he was too much a Roman and a man to have been thrall tc

prettiness merely. There must have been a glorious greed of passion in an Italian nature like his and Marc Antony's, which only the very soul of southern voluptuousness could have so satisfied and enchained. Nor allow any western feeling to mar the magnificence of the picture which this place and day, set with those figures, offer to your delight. Let us please imagination with these stately figures of history. Granting all the immoralities and improprieties, if they seem such to you, let them go, as not pertinent to the occasion. But the grace, and the beauty, and the power, the sun behind his spots, are the large inheritance of all time. Why should we insist upon having all the inconvenience of cotemporaries, whose feet were pinched and sides squeezed by these so regal figures? Why should we encase ourselves triply and triply in a close ball of petty prejudices and enlightened ideas, and go tumbling, beetle-like, through the moonlighted halls of history, instead of floating upon butterfly-wings, and with the song and soaring of the lark? The Howadji will use his advantage of distance, and not see the snakes and sharp stones which he knows are upon the mountains, but only the graceful grandeur of the outline against the sky.

Education is apt to spoil the poetry of travel by so starting us in the dry ruts of prejudice, or even

upon the turnpike of principle, that we can scarcely ever see the most alluring landscape except at right angles, and doubtfully, and hurriedly, over our shoulders. Yet if Cleopatra had done so, would the Howadji have tarried at Erment? The great persons and events that notch time in passing, do so because nature gave them such an excessive and exaggerated impulse, that wherever they touch they leave their mark; and that intense humanity secures human sympathy beyond the most beautiful balance, which, indeed, the angels love, and which we are learning to appreciate.

For what is the use of being a modern, with the privilege of tasting every new day as it ripens, if we can not leave in the vaults of antiquity what we choose? Was Alexander less the Great because he had a wry neck? Leave the wry neck behind. You may bring forth all the botches of the stonecutters, if you will, but mine be the glorious booty of the Laocoon, of the Venus, and the Apollo. I shall not, therefore, say that the artist who wrought works so fair, did not botch elsewhere. But I certainly shall not inquire.

In like manner Julius Cæsar and Queen Cleopatra being of no farther influence upon human affairs, imagination sucks from history all the sweet of their story, and builds honey-hives nectarean. The How

adji fears that the clerical imagination at Erment might not do so-that all the reform and universal peace societies would miss the Cleopatra charm. But their vocation is not wandering around the world and being awakened by voluptuous mornings. Their honey is hived from May-flowers of rhetoric in the tabernacle, to which the zealous and "panoplied in principle" must repair, passing Cleopatra by.

The village of Erment balances singularly this glowing Ghazeeyah fame by offsetting the undoubted temple of the doubtful Cleopatra with a vague claim of being the birth-place of Moses. We did not tarry long enough to resolve the question, although as he was found by Pharaoh's daughter among the bulrushes of the lower Nile, there is no glaring impossibility that he may have been born at Erment.

Disregarding Moses, we cordially cursed the shekh of the village, who has coolly put his mud hovel upon the roof of the adyta of the temple, and quite as coolly converted the adyta themselves into dungeons. The modern Egyptian has not the slightest curiosity or interest in the noble remains of his land. He crawls around them, and covers them with mud cells, in which he and his swarm like vermin. speak them fair as you would water rats. Without ideas, how can they feel the presence of ideas? We

But

passed through the mud-walled court below the shekh's dwelling to reach the adyta of the temple The court was grouped with Arnout soldiers, crouching over a fire, smoking and chatting. These Albanians were the fiercest part of Grandfather Mehemet's army. They revolted when Belzoni was in Cairo, drove the Pacha into the citadel, ravaged the city at leisure, and were then quieted. But they became altogether too fierce-assassinating quiet and moral Mohammedans on the slightest provocation, and Christians as they would cockroachesand Grandfather Mehemet was obliged to send the most of them to the destructive climate of upper Ethiopia, and so be gently rid of them.

They are light-complexioned, sharp-featured, smart-looking men, else had Mehemet Ali not used them so constantly, and are by far the most intelligent-looking class in Egypt; for they have dashes of Greek blood in their veins, and modern Greek blood is thick with knavery. But their faces are as bad as bright. Like fish, they seem to have cold blood, and you feel that they would rather shoot you than not, as boys prefer sticking flies to letting them be. Hence a certain interest with which the passing Howadji regards their silver-mounted pistols.

We paused a moment at the door of the adytum,