were below, the women in the galleries, kneeling upon carpets: some were squatting on their heels, turning their heads every now and then to the right and to the left, and that, as I was told, to salute the Prophet. The iman pronounced the prayer, which the people repeated, nearly word for word, and accompanied with inclinations and prostrations, the number of which is fixed for each exercise.

In the largest mosque, which we visited last, an immense congregation of the faithful was assembled. No sooner had we entered than our conductors became alarmed at the marked attention which our presence all at once excited. They earnestly besought us to retire, and we complied, not so much for fear of what might befall ourselves, but to avoid bringing them into the danger which they seemed so much to dread on their own account.

You must not conclude from this circumstance that Mussulman fanaticism is still what it was some centuries ago, and what the Koran would have it to be:* that would be a mistake. Fanaticism prevails not to such a degree except in the ardent votaries of Islamism, whose number is daily decreasing, and among the lowest class of the people. The intercourse of Europeans with Egypt having become extremely frequent, is constantly tending to diminish its violence, and I may even add that the Crescent is on the wane. The religious law of Mahomet, of which the sophists of the 18th century set themselves

Fight against the unbelievers," says the Koran, "till all false religions are exterminated. Put them to death; spare them not; and when you have thinned their number by dint of slaughter, reduce the rest to slavery, and crush them by tributes." See chapters 8, 9, and 47.

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up for apologists, which the hot-headed revolutionists of France, in 1793, extolled as superior to Christianity, and which some modern travellers have not blushed to declare reasonable, has in itself no principle, no character of durability. It cannot establish itself but by the sword, which lent its force to the imposture; it cannot maintain itself but by the oppression, and especially by the ignorance, to which it dooms its votaries: now that ignorance is clearing away, though but slowly, and it will become more and more impossible to bring back men's minds to it. So long as the prohibition to engage in literary and philosophical studies was strictly observed, Islamism could not but be formidable. Now, letters and philosophy are penetrating on all sides into the East; and already unequivocal signs are manifesting themselves as the forerunners of a moral revolution which must change its aspect. It is not yet one hundred years since the Mussulmans, princes and people, had a horror of printing, and proscribed all our books, from the apprehension that some of them might introduce our ideas and shake the faith in the Prophet. At the present day, our books, nay, our newspapers, are imported, circulated, and find numerous readers. With the intellectual activity which agitates and hurries on nations, with that universal greediness, that thirst of wealth, which torments mankind, with that continual series of commercial enterprizes and speculations, whose importance and extent are incessantly giving rise to new relations, and multiplying them to infinity, how would it be possible to prevent that communication of ideas, that action of books whose influence upon religious creeds is felt even when

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treating of matters the most foreign to such subjects! And if in Mahometanism, to say nothing of the absurdity of some of its most mischievous dogmas, there were nothing but that shameful morality of corrupted hearts, which, as it has been remarked a thousand times, always supposes that two persons of different sexes cannot be together, or look at one another, without meditating crime; if, in this morality, there were nothing more than polygamy, the captivity of women, the right to shut them up, to repudiate them upon the slightest pretext, or without any pretext whatever; the right to make eunuchs, the right to doom the conquered, men, women, and children to slavery; the right to use, to abuse, them as beasts of burden and instruments of lasciviousness; if, lastly, this morality merely served to consecrate the despotism of the sovereign, established and proclaimed absolute master of the property, the liberty, the life of all-a despotism which, with its horrible consequences, springs from the Koran, according to the confession of Volney himself, as a natural and inevitable effect—I ask you, my dear Charles, can such a state of things, such doctrines, or, to speak more correctly, such barbarism, subsist long without the conditions which have upheld it? can it long withstand the elements of ruin which have crept into it, develop themselves in its bosom, and act the more efficaciously, inasmuch as the result which they are destined to produce is much less in the combinations and the will of man than in the dispositions of Providence?

The Franciscan Fathers have celebrated Corpus Christi day with all the pomp that can accompany so holy and

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so august a ceremony in an infidel land. The solemn procession took place in the interior of the convent, where an altar was erected and decorated with the most elegant simplicity. Several catholics attended it, and walked with profound devotion after the clergy. After the last benediction, which concluded the service, as I thought, what was my surprise, and what pleasure it gave me, to hear the choir sing the Domine salvum fac imperatorem ! This is a tribute of gratitude which the good Fathers pay with all their hearts to our beloved sovereign, under whose protection the monastery is placed. I deemed myself happy to be able to mingle my voice with their's, and I joined with my whole soul in their prayers, beseeching the Lord to hear us whenever we invoked him in behalf of the best of princes.

Farewell, my dear friend. A few days longer to arrange my affairs, and to visit, if possible, one or two establishments that I wish to see, and then I shall hasten my return to Europe. My next letter will probably be dated from Alexandria.

LETTER LVI.

RETURN TO ALEXANDRIA-TRAVELLING PLANS-CARDINALS GREGORIO AND PEDICINI-INDISCRETION-FAREWELL VISIT TO MEHEMET ALI

-MUMMY-CROCODILE.

Alexandria, June 16, 1833.

I have been in Alexandria ever since last week, my dear friend. After an absence of two years and long peregrinations, it is a pleasing thought to me that I am approaching Switzerland, and returning to brethren

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- PURPOSED VISIT TO ROME.

whose exile I have shared, with whom I have passed days of such perfect and pure tranquillity. Great as is the distance that yet parts me from them, it sometimes seems as though I were already in their midst: but as yet I know not when the moment that shall crown my wishes will arrive. I am impatiently waiting for some vessel bound to Malta, where I expect to perform quarantine. Thence, if nothing happens to thwart my plans, I shall go to Naples, and then to Rome, whence I shall proceed by the shortest route to St. Urban, where I hope to learn tidings of our poor exiles.

The motive which determines me to visit the capital of the Christian world, is to lay at the feet of the sovereign pontiff the homage of my profound veneration and my warm gratitude for the touching kindness with which his Holiness complied with the requests that I ventured to make to him previously to setting out on my pilgrimage, and for the high protection which he has condescended to afford me. My heart also feels a longing to see once more those members of the sacred college with whom I was a prisoner in the castle of Vincennes, and who are yet living, the cardinals Gregorio and Pedicini, men eminently distinguished for learning and piety, who gloriously confessed the faith when in fetters, and whose noble firmness and sublime resignation merited the admiration not only of the catholic church, but even of those who do not belong to it. Seized unjustly and contrary to the law of nations, in a foreign territory, by the order of him to whose yoke France was then subject, and thrown into the same prison with these illustrious captives, to the example of their virtues I owed the courage to bear as a Christian