learned from the sight of a tomb? If any lesson is taught by it, why should we complain that a king resolved to render that lesson perpetual? Majestic monuments constitute an essential part of the glory of every human society. Unless we maintain that it is a matter of indifference whether a nation leaves behind it a name or no name in history, we cannot condemn those structures which extend the memory of a people beyond its own existence, and make it contemporary with the future generations that fix their residence in its forsaken fields. Of what consequence is it, then, whether these edifices were amphitheatres or sepulchres? Every thing is a tomb with a nation that no longer exists. When man is gone, the monuments of his life are still more vain than those of his death: his mausoleum is at least serviceable to his ashes; but do his palaces retain any particle of his pleasures?

Most certainly, if we would be strict, a little grove is sufficient for all, and six feet of ground, as Mathew Molé observes, will always do justice to the greatest man in the world: God may be adored under a tree, as beneath the dome of St. Peter's; and a man may live in a cottage as well as in the Louvre. The error of this mode of reasoning consists in transferring one order of things into another. Besides, a nation is not more happy when it lives in ignorance of the arts, than when it leaves behind striking evidences of its genius. People have ceased to believe in the existence of those communities of shepherds who pass their days in innocence, and beguile the delicious hours with rambling in the recesses of forests. Full well we know that these honest pastors make war upon each other, that they may feast upon the sheep of their neighbours. Their bowers are neither shaded

with vines, nor embalmed with the perfume of flowers; you are suffocated in their habitation with the smoke, and stifled with the stench of milk. In poetry, and in philosophy, a petty, half-barbarous tribe may enjoy every earthly blessing; but merciless history subjects them to the same calamities as the rest of mankind. Are they who so loudly exclaim against glory-are they, I would ask, totally regardless of renown? For my part, so far from considering the monarch who erected the great Pyramid as a madman, I look upon him to have been a sovereign of a magnanimous disposition. The idea of vanquishing time by a tomb, of surviving generations, manners, laws, and ages, by a coffin, could not have sprung from a vulgar mind. If this be pride, it is at least a grand pride. Such a vanity as that which produced the great Pyramid, that has withstood the ravages of three or four thousand years, must certainly, in the end, be accounted as something.

For the rest, these Pyramids reminded me of less pompous monuments, though they were likewise sepulchres: I mean those edifices of turf, which cover the remains of the Indians on the banks of the Ohio. When I visited these, I was in a very different state of mind from that in which I contemplated the mausoleums of the Pharaohs: I was then beginning my journey, and now I am finishing it. The world, at these two periods of my life, wore to me precisely the appearance of the two deserts in which I have seen these two species of tombs; a smiling wilderness, and barren sands.

CHAPTER II.

Cairo-French Mamelukes-The Pacha's Son-Plains of Memphis-View of the Pyramids-Departure from Cairo-Arab Camp-Attack on the Author's Vessel-Esmenard's Apostrophe to Egypt - Return to Alexandria- Inscription on Pompey's Pillar-Ali Bey and Atala-Dreariness of Alexandria and its Environs--Embarkation for Tunis-Tempestuous Weather Island of Scarpanto-Stampalia-A HurricaneNew Year's Day-The Kerkeni Islands-Arrival at Tunis.

WE landed at Boulak, where we hired horses and asses to carry us to Cairo. This city, commanded by the ancient castle of Babylon and Mount Mokattam, forms a very picturesque view, from the great number of palm-trees, sycamores, and minarets, which rise from the midst of it. We entered it by a ruined suburb, and lay-stalls where vultures were devouring their prey. We alighted in the quarter of the Frauks, a street without any thoroughfare, the entrance of which is shut up every night, like the exterior cloisters of a convent. We were received by Monsieur

*

whom M. Drovetti had entrusted with the French agency at Cairo. He took us under his protection, and sent to acquaint the pacha with our arrival ; he at the same time caused the five

* By the greatest of accidents, the name of my host is effaced in my journal, and I fear that my memory has not retained it correctly, for which reason I cannot venture to insert it. I should not forgive myself for such a mischance, if my memory were as treacherous in regard to the services, attentions, and civilities of my host, as it has proved in respect to his name.

French Mamelukes to be apprised of the circumstance, that they might attend us in our excursions.

These Mamelukes were in the service of the pacha. Large armies always leave behind them some stragglers; ours lost in this manner two or three hundred men, who remained dispersed in Egypt. They followed the fortunes of different beys, and soon became renowned for their valour. It was universally admitted, that if these deserters, instead of espousing opposite interests, had united and appointed a French bey, they might have made themselves masters of the whole country. Unfortunately, they wanted a leader, and almost all perished in the pay of the masters whom they had chosen. When I was at Cairo, Mohamed Ali Pacha was still deploring the death of one of these brave fellows. This soldier, who was at first a drum-boy in one of our regiments, had fallen by the chance of war into the hands of the Turks. Before he had arrived at manhood, he enlisted himself among the troops of the pacha. Mohamed, to whom he was yet a stranger, seeing him charge a whole host of enemies, cried out : "Who is that man? he must be a Frenchman"—and a Frenchman he actually proved to be. From that moment he became a favourite with his master, and nothing was talked of but his intrepidity. He was killed shortly before my arrival in Egypt, in an action in which the other five Mamelukes lost their horses.

These men were natives of Gascony, Languedoc, and Picardy: their chief acknowledged that he was the son of a shoemaker of Toulouse. The next in authority to him acted as interpreter for his comrade. He spoke Turkish and Arabic very fluently,

FRENCH MAMELUKES.

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and always said in French j'étions, j'allions, je faisions. A third, a tall young man, very slender and pale, had lived a long time in the desert with the Bedouins, and exceedingly regretted that way of life. He told me that when he found himself alone in the midst of sands, upon a camel, he was seized with such transports of joy that he was unable to restrain them. The pacha esteemed these men so highly, that he preferred them to the rest of his spahis; they alone equalled, and even surpassed the intrepidity of those formidable horse destroyed by the emperor at the battle of the Pyramids. We live in an age of wonders; every Frenchman now seems to be summoned to perform an extraordinary part: five soldiers out of the lowest ranks of our army, were, in 1806, all but masters of Cairo. Nothing could be a more amusing and singular spectacle than to see Abdallah of Toulouse take the strings of his caftan, lay them. about the faces of the Arabs and Albanians who annoyed him, and thus clear a wide passage for us through the most populous streets. For the rest, these kings by exile had, after the example of Alexander, adopted the manners of the conquered; they wore long vests of silk, fine white turbans, and superb arms; they kept a harem, slaves, and horses of the highest blood: things which their fathers in Gascony and Picardy knew nothing at all about. But among the mats, the carpets, the divans, which I saw in their house, I remarked a relic of their native land; it was a uniform which exhibited sabre cuts in different places, and covered the foot of a bed made up in the French fashion. Abdallah perhaps reserved these honourable tatters for the conclusion of the dream, like the shepherd raised to the station of prime minister: