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a body being young and healthful, doth the same grown 

 old and wasted with diseases." — (Geo. Sandys, 1610.) 



Cairo has of late years been much resorted to by Euro- 

 pean invalids for a winter's residence, and in many points 

 of view it possesses very decided advantages over most 

 places in Europe. Few places are more amusing and 

 attractive to the European visitor, nor are its attractions 

 very soon or easily exhausted. The numerous Saracenic 

 palaces and mosques, Avith their beautiful minarets, splen- 

 did domes, and richly ornamented porches and cornices, 

 the lofty flat-roofed houses, with their curious projecting 

 and iron-barred, or quaintly carved windows, the fountains 

 with their luxiuiant carving, and Arabic inscriptions, the 

 bazaars stored with the various productions of the East, 

 the baths, the citadel, with its extensive and most 

 interesting prospects, the narrow and crooked streets 

 afibrding shelter alike from the scorching rays of the sum- 

 mer's sun and the wmter's blast, and presenting a wondrous 

 architecture without symmetry', and yet strangely har- 

 monious and pleasing, the strange commingling of costumes 

 and nationalities of the past and present, the Christian and 

 the Moslem. These, and other sources of instructive gratifi- 

 cation, are met Avitli without risk, and without fatigue. The 

 neighbourhood, too, abounds in objects of interest. The 

 hotels now, especially those in the Uzbekieh, or Great 

 Square are good and moderately cheap — from eight to ten 

 shillings per day ; — yet the Christian philanthropist is 

 constantly reminded, that in this " Queen of Arabian 

 cities" — "this epitome of the whole Eastern world," there 

 flourish, as in a hot-bed, all those vices which have been the 

 bane of the vast, but short-lived despotisms of the East. 

 " Converse with whomsover you please, you will quickly 

 discover, amid the charms of the most dazzling and 

 fascinating manners, infernal ideas and principles peeping 

 forth, like the asp and the scorpion, among flowers. 



