and a swarm of unclean women came clustering out They were the relatives of the prisoners whom the government held in the dungeons. There was no light in the small chamber which we stooped to enter, except what curious daylight stole shrinkingly in at the low door. Abdallah lighted his torch, and we looked around upon the holy of holies of Queen Cleopatra. The adytum was small, and reeked with filth and stench. Two or three prisoners lay miserably upon the damp floor, and we held our glaring torch over them, and looked at the sculptures on the walls. But without much heart. It was sorry work, and we made it brief- the indulgence of curiosity and sentiment in so sad a society.

There was a little inner room, upon the walls of which we found the other portrait of the queen. But I could not remain-imagination and the mere human stomach recoiled. For in this adytum of adyta in Cleopatra's temple-the olive-browedthe odorous-was uncleanness such as scarcely the pilgrim to the Tarpeian rock has conceived.

We passed through the court unshot, and through the dusty village, whose myriad dogs, and of especial foul fame even in Egypt, barked frantically, and so emerged upon the corn stubble and the coarse hilfeh grass, upon the river bank. Then through a palm-grove we entered upon greener reaches, and

us.

sat down upon a high point over the river to await the boat, which was to float slowly down and meet The perfection of the day lacked only a vision of leisure, graceful life. And what other could the vision be upon that point in the calm air, high over the calm water, but that of the queen's barge, sumptuously gliding upon the golden gleam? Behold it, dreamer, where it comes:

"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue,)
O'erpicturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids
With diverse-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool-
And what they undid, did."

"O rare for Antony!" "Her gentlewomen like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers, the silken tackle
Swells with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
That yarely frame the office. From the barge

A strange, invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharves. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,

Whistling to the air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra, too,

And made a gap in nature."

"Rare Egyptian."

"There's the junk," said the Pacha.

"She be float very quick," said Golden-Sleeve, and sliding down the sand, we stepped on board and gave chase to fancy's fair flotilla. Fair and fleet, it floated on, away, nor ever comes to shore. But still through the cloudless calm of sky and stream your dreaming sees it pass, with measured throb of languid oars, voluptuous music voicing the day's repose.

In the afternoon, we dropped leisurely down the river to Thebes. Before sunset we were moored to the shore of Luxor, on the eastern side of the stream, and almost in the shadow of the temple. A cluster of Howadji's boats clung to the shore with gay streamers and national flags, and all over the shore sat and stood groups of natives with trinkets and curiosities to sell, or donkeys to let. We strolled up to the temple of Luxor, and looked westward over the mountains of the "Libyan suburb," as Herodotus calls the part of the city upon the western shore. It was covered with temples and tombs then, but the great mass of the city was on the eastern bank, where Luxor now stands. The highlands

were exquisitely hued in the sunset. But Patience was so belabored with an universal shriek of bucksheesh, that she fled to the junk again, and recovered in the cool calm of Theban starlight.

XXXVI.

ΜΕΜΝΟΝ.

"Heard melodies are sweet,-but those unheard are sweeter."

FROM earliest childhood Memnon was the central, commanding figure in my fancies of the East. Rising imagination struck first upon his form, and he answered in music-wondrous, wooing, winning, that must needs vibrate forever, although his voice is hushed. Whether this was from an instinctive feeling, that this statue and its story were a kind of completeness and perfection in art-the welcome recognition of art by nature-or more probably from the simple marvellousness and beauty of the tale, I shall inquire of the Sphinx. As we passed up the river, and I beheld in the solemn, sunless morning light, like a shadowed, thoughtful summer day, the majestic form sitting serenely upon the plain, the most prominent and noticeable object in the landscape, I knew that memories would linger around him as hopes had clustered, and that his calm grandeur would rule my East forever.