safety. From the universal chaos, what new combinations might not be educed!

No sooner, therefore, had the Porte "put the question by," than Mohammad Alee proceeded to answer it. The Egyptian army, headed by Ibrahim Pacha, advanced into Syria, and sat down before Acre. Cherishing the old grudge against Abdallah, the Porte, now that a decided part had been taken, smiled faintly in approval. But the conduct of the war betrayed resources of ability and means which kindled terrible suspicions. The firman came from Stamboul, commanding the Pacha of Egypt to withdraw into his own province. He declined, and was declared a rebel.

The bridge thus fell behind him, and only victory or death lay before.

For six months Ibrahim Pacha lay before Acre, and on the 27th May, 1832, he entered by bloody assault the city which Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus had conquered before him, and from which Napoleon Bonaparte had retired foiled. The Syrian war began.

The victorious army advanced, triumphing. The Syrian cities fell before it. The stream of conquest swept northward, overflowing Damascus as it passed. The war was no longer a quarrel of two Pachas; it was a question of life or death for the

Turkish empire.

Vainly the Sultan's choicest generals struggled to stem the torrent. The proud walls along the Golden Horn trembled, lest their pride should be for the third time humbled, and this time, as the last, from the Asian shore.

Northern and Western Europe stared, amazed, at the wonderful spectacle, listening across the hushed Mediterranean to the clang of arms resounding in the effete East, as the appalled Romans heard the gusty roar of the battle of the Huns high over them, and invisible in the air.

Surely it was only the interference of the three Powers that saved the Sultan's throne. That alone deprived us of the pageant of another oriental military romance, so rapid in inception, so entire in execution, that we should have better comprehended those sudden barbaric descents of the middle ages, which changed in a moment the political aspect of the invaded land: in a moment, because the mighty appearance of life and power was but a mummy, which a blow would pulverise.

One man, however strong and skilful, could not withstand the force of Europe, and Mohammad Alee retired, baffled, before the leaders of the political Trinity that a few years before had dethroned Napoleon.

The crisis of his life was passed, and unfavour

ably for his hopes and aims. At the age of sixtyfive he relinquished the struggle with Fate; and, still one of the great men of a century rich in great men, with no hope before him and none behindfor since kingly genius is not hereditary, your divine right is a disastrous fiction-he sank slowly away into dotage.

Before the end, however, both he and his son Ibrahim showed themselves to the Europeans who had watched with such astonished interest the culmination and decay of their power. Ibrahim Pacha, with his fangs removed, shook his harmless rattle, for the last time in the world's hearing, at a dinner given him by young Englishmen, at the Reform Club in Pall Mall; and the wreck of Mohammad Alee, drivelling and dozing, took a hand at whist with young Americans in a hotel at Naples.

Father and son returned to Egypt, and died there. A vast mosque of alabaster, commenced by Mohammad Alee, and now finished, crowns Cairo, "the delight of the imagination." He wished to be buried there; but he lies without the city walls, in that suburb of tombs, upon the cracked sides of one of which a Persian poet has written, "Each crevice of this ancient edifice is a half-opened mouth, that laughs at the fleeting pomp of royal abodes."

All the winds that blow upon Cairo laugh that mocking laughter, and in any thoughtful mood, as you listen to them and look over the city, you will mark the two alabaster minarets of Mohammad Alee's mosque, shafts of snow in the rich blue air, if you will, but yet pointing upward.

Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, the superb slave he burned to possess, still dreams in the sun. We look from the tent door and see her sleeping, and the remembrance of this last momentary interest which disturbed the slumber, reminds us that it will one day be broken. So fair is the prize, that, knowing all others desire her as ardently, no single hand feels strong enough to grasp it, and the conflict of many ambitions secures her peace.

Yet it is clear that nerve and skill could do what they have done; and so spare is the population, so imbecile the government, and so rich the soil, that a few thousand determined men could march unresisted through Syria, and possess the fair and fertile land.

CHAPTER III.

ADVANCING.

THIS last throb of life in the history of Syria invades but for a musing moment the abiding interest of the land. Yet as MacWhirter lumbers sluggishly along, you cannot escape the mood of reverie through which the various forms of its fate will pass.

The landscape is still of the same open, basinlike character, and our course lies toward the hills of Judea, which seem this morning like the misty Jura seen from Lake Leman. The nearer country swells and moves in vivid lines of green, and the fresh young leaves of the fig, upon the heavy limbs, are touched by the sun into golden flakes. The fences are hedges of prickly pear. The houses are of clay or stone, where it can be found, clean-looking for such, and warmer than the Egyptian houses. Scant garden plots of vegetables dot the fields, and