thought-many persons, whose intelligence he would be the last to disregard, find obscurity and even serious difficulty of comprehension in the diction of many passages. We say advisedly in the diction, for his abstinence from all overdrawn conceits is remarkable in a young poet of any time, and his careful avoidance of the shadowy border-land of metaphysics and poetry in which so many versifiers of our own day take refuge from the open scrutiny of critical sunlight deserves full praise and recognition. It is probable that a strict supervision over the combinations of his fancy is the best remedy for him to trust to, and it is a proud and pleasant reflection that if his fruit be somewhat hidden, it is by the abundance of his own foliage.

To some severer students than ourselves, this wealth of illustration and imagery seriously damages the classical integrity of the poem. If, however, Mr. Swinburne has succeeded in preserving so much of the old Hellenic character that the sense is rather of difference than of incongruity, is this not an additional evidence of the enduring power these ancient master-pieces of form exercise over minds and times the most distinctive from the elements of their own production?

With

the exception of the Iphigenia' of Göthe, all modern adaptations of the Greek drama which have taken any hold on the world, have mainly succeeded by applications, sometimes the most heterogeneous, of the old world to the new. The strongest example is of course the French theatre, which retained little beyond the shell of traditionary names and a certain supposed analogy of sentiments; and yet it would be bold to assert that Racine and Corneille would have gained by the absence of the classic models. The truth is that modern literature does not want mere imitations, however ingenious, of these magnificent monuments; but that is no reason why they should not continue to sway and people the imagination of the world, and supply, out of their storehouse of beautiful and majestic fable, inexhaustible materials for the delineation of human passion, and the various developments of the higher instincts of mankind.

ART. IX.-Letters from Egypt, 1863-65. By Lady DUFF GORDON. London: 1865.

EGYPT, at the commencement of the present century, was almost as unknown and mysterious as her own hieroglyphics. If we except the Arabic histories and descriptions open only to the learned in that recondite language, Herodotus was our most recent authority. Egypt, possessing the highest interest to the historian and the divine, was scarcely as much known to Europe as the wilds of Tartary. Napoleon first broke the spell of mystery that held the land, and the celebrated commission of the French Institute, headed by Dénon, accompanied the armies which fought beside the Pyramids. Then followed Bruce, Belzoni, Niebuhr, Burckhardt; all of whom did good work towards disinterring Egypt from the sands of its deserts, and removing the obstacles raised by Mohammedan intolerance and apathy. At length, about the year 1825, a small party of Englishmen met in Cairo, living among the people like Copts or Arabs, and patiently studying the manners and customs both of ancient and modern Egypt. Two of that party were Wilkinson and Lane, one of whom exhausted the ancient people, the other, with inimitable accuracy, the modern Egyptians.

Such was our acquaintance with the land of the Pharaohs, of Joseph, and of Moses, when five-and-twenty years ago, a line of steampackets to Alexandria threw open the country to pleasureseekers and health-seekers. The Nile soon superseded the Rhine for a fashionable tour, and we have been inundated, not by its fertilising waters, but by a flood of books about Egypt, of which it may be generally said that they have done little to increase our knowledge of the antiquities of the country, nothing whatever to make us better acquainted with its people. We know no more at the present day of the inhabitants, of their feelings and tastes, their human sympathies and religious hopes, than we did before the stream of tourists set Nilewards. True, Mr. Lane may be said to have done all that can be done in the way of describing that people; but the Modern Egyptians' is not intended to give us every-day experience of life in Egypt-rather the results of that experience. Even the brilliant pages of Eōthen, of Miss Martineau, and those of two or three other writers, afford us little insight into the inner life of the Egyptian. Nor is the cause far to seek. A foreign people cannot be understood in a short, and generally hurried, visit; nor indeed can they be appreciated by the oldest resident,

unless he will consent to waive all prejudice and live among them as one of themselves.

Perhaps Lady Duff Gordon will not be envied for the experience she has gained. It has been dearly bought, enforced by protracted illness, and involving banishment from her family and friends, the privileges of society, even the common comforts of life. She went to Egypt unprejudiced against the people, and has lived among them, chiefly at Thebes. Her letters, which form the little volume at the head of this article, were not written for the public eye, but were addressed to her two nearest relations: they are, therefore, entirely free from constraint, and do not pretend to high literary merit, although they are written in a singularly captivating and vigorous English style; but they possess the rare virtue of enabling the reader to realise the position of the writer and the true aspect of the people. Livingstone has borne witness to African virtues, the Competition Wallah' has courageously fought the battle of our Indian fellow-subjects, we have felt with Vambéry the parting from his faithful but filthy friends, who were so repulsive till on better acquaintance we learnt to respect their hearts. The same lesson may be learnt from these letters, for it is not often that an Englishman, let alone an English lady, lives among modern Egyptians. Every one who has done the same in any country of the East will enter into her feelings when she says:

6

'I am so used now to our poor, shabby life, that it makes quite a strange impression on me to see all the splendour which English travellers manage to bring with them on board their boats,-splendour which, two or three years ago, I should not even have remarked. And thus, out of my "inward consciousness (as Germans say), many of the peculiarities and faults of the people of Egypt are explained to me and accounted for.' (P. 357.)

To form a just estimate of the Egyptian, we ought to have more than an acquaintance with him as he is; we require some knowledge of the events of history that have reduced him to his present state, and of the government that every day moulds his thoughts. Let us Let us briefly relate how he has reached his present condition, and what is the pedigree of the people whose country is a palimpsest, in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that.'

For the last two-and-twenty centuries, Egypt has been without a native ruler. The ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs fell with the second subjugation of the country by the Persians, about the year B.C. 350; after having been shaken to its foundations, and its capital destroyed, by Cambyses two centuries

before. The Persians were succeeded by the Greeks, to whom the possession of Egypt passed, with that of Persia, of which it was a province, by the conquests of Alexander the Great; and under the Ptolemies it recovered much of its prosperity, albeit theirs too was an alien rule. Three hundred years later, when it became a Roman province, the population consisted partly of Greeks, partly of slaves. The Egyptian himself was almost denationalised. Augustus perpetuated the degradation of the native inhabitants, and since his time the system he inaugurated of government by lieutenants of the Empire has continued, with the exception of the more brilliant period corresponding to the times of the Crusades. The Mohammedan invaders, six centuries later, found the country in every respect weaker than when the Romans first gained possession of it. Religious animosities had been added to political feuds. The native population having embraced Christianity under the ritual of the Coptic Church, hated the Greek communion and its professors more than they hated the newly promulgated faith of Arabia. After a brief show of resistance, they joined the invaders, and rendered easy the conquest of the country.

With the Arab domination, the final extinction of the Egyptian race as a nation was consummated. So complete was the subjugation that the Arabs imposed their language, both vocabulary and grammar, upon the native inhabitants; and by an enormous immigration rendered them in a far greater degree Arab than Copt. Since that period, the Copt has been little heard of in history. The ancient Egyptian element, already reduced in numbers, was, to a great extent, absorbed by the Arab colonists, and the remnant (called Copt to this day) has gradually dwindled to insignificance, although not without passing through the fiery ordeal of insurrection and persecution. It is now about one-fourteenth of the whole population of the country. The modern Egyptian, however, though far more Arab than Copt, retains many of the characteristics of the latter, and inherits his oppressed condition. The country was at first governed by Arab lieutenants of the early Khaleefehs and of those of Damascus and Baghdad; until with the gradual weakening of that great Empire, and the struggles of the orthodox followers of Othmán, or Sunnees with the heretic adherents of 'Alee, or Shiy'aees, it became, under the government of a foreign ruler, Ahmad Ibn-Tooloon (whose mosque in Cairo, by-the-bye, contains the earliest known instance of the pointed arch), nearly independent, foreshadowing its speedy independence as a kingdom, although under foreign dynasties,

until its final ruin by the Turks. In the year 968-9, the heretic Fátimee Khaleefehs of Western Africa seized the capital, and transferred their throne to the site of Cairo, calling their new city El-Káhireh, or the Victorious. To these, after a duration of two hundred years, succeeded, by the arbitrament of the sword, the orthodox Kurds, of whom the first and greatest was Saladin (or Saláh-ed-Deen). Then commenced the system of rearing slaves, or Memlooks, who should hold all places of power, and in the event of the king dying without issue, succeed to the throne; for the offspring of the Kurds and of their successors the Turkish and Circassian Memlook sultans failed to perpetuate the line, the children of foreigners rarely attaining to manhood in Egypt. During its existence as an independent Mohammedan kingdom, Egypt reached great importance; but the inherent weakness of the government prevented its duration. The people suffered severely from the constant political feuds of the grandees and court favourites, and it was but the shadow of its former self that fell to the sword of Seleem nearly four centuries ago. Still how far above what we now find it after those four centuries of Turkish tyranny and lust! Governed by Pashas, following each other at short intervals, the unhappy population has since been used merely to enrich each successive ruler. Every step, until our own times, has been a downward one. Mohammed Ali Pasha found the country distracted by political struggles. A new race of Memlooks had sprung up, and profiting by the wretched weakness of the Turks, bid fair to seize the reins of government. all know the end of these Memlooks. Enough has been written both in condemnation and extenuation of the massacre of the 1st of March 1811. Of Mohammed Ali's rule, history will say that he desired a better destiny for the country than it is ever likely to have under Turkish pashas. His political sagacity was Western rather than Eastern, and if he had been allowed to establish his family as independent rulers, a dynasty of men like himself might have raised Egypt again to an important place in the world's history. But England decided against his independence, when the Egyptian army was almost at the gates of Constantinople; and while the country has relapsed into the position of a Turkish province, his successors have not proved themselves to be much better than preceding Turkish governors. The irresistible advance of civilisation has made some acts of oppression impossible; some flagrant abuses have been suppressed; the influx of travellers, the overland route to India, and, lately, the cultivation of cotton, have thrown more money

We