A Letter from Cairo. 105 



enters the precincts of an oriental city, every thing is strange. It is a 

 great masqueradcj given on an immense theatre. Except in the Frank 

 quarter, the streets of Alexandria are narrow — not more than eight feet 

 wide — and covered from house to house with matted awnings, which form 

 rude bazaars. Latticed oriel wi:idows, nearly meeting above the headj 

 contribute^ with the awnings, to subdue the light, and to shed a mysterious 

 demi-joiir upon the moving masses below. Every one, I believe, is consci- 

 ous that some change comes over him in passing from the garish blaze of 

 an open street, such as Regent-street, for instance, into the crowded walks 

 of a covered way like the Quadrant. On scrutinizing this peculiar feeling, 

 it will be found to be something more than the simple effect of the dimi- 

 nished liglit upon the visual sense. A degree of obscurity invests the 

 passer by ; you look at him, in consequence, with keener attention, and 

 are aware that you are yourself more minutely observed. You are in fact 

 in a transition state between a street and an apartment, and the crowd 

 around you is, in some degree, transformed into company ; some sentiment 

 of this kind is at work upon first plunging into the narrow passes of this 

 city. Beings, turbanned, capped, shawled, moving slowly along in the 

 burly dignity of eastern costume ; Arab women, in blue cotton shifts, the 

 only covering of their squalid bodies, except the universal veil of the same 

 material and colour, wiiich envelopes the head and falls down to the loins ; 

 goats, camels, and asses, threading their lazy way through the dense crowd, 

 tliat scarcely opens to let them pass, and closes like a fluid upon their 

 wake ; black and naked children ; now and then a Turk on horseback, gor- 

 geous in his dress and housings, and all herisse with pistols, scymetars, and 

 daggers J Jews, Greeks, Copts, Armenians, squatted cross-legged on the 

 elevated counters of their little open shops, and awaiting, with the immo- 

 bility of a porcelain Joss, the approach of customers ; every colour and 

 every costume that the heart of man can conceive, all huddled together as 

 close and as contrasted as the atoms of a kaleidoscope. — With all tliese, 

 and much and many more indescribables, are you at once mixed up in the 

 familiar compression of what would seem to be a private apartment, where 

 you have, in some extraordinary manner, become one of the company. But 

 the eye is soon satisfied with seeing : there is nothing at Alexandria to 

 exercise the understanding or engage the heart. The barbarism of a new 

 people it is always curious, and often pleasant, to view and study ; but 

 that which follows upon a prior and better state, is observed with very 

 different feelings. Who can look witloiit disgust at the social condition of 

 tills once mighty place, where all ranks have now rotted down to one com- 

 mon level, save the barbarian who rules over all ? as all her edifices have 

 crumbled into dust, save the colossal column that still frowns down upon 

 the scene of ruin. Yet Alexandria possesses many objects which may in- 

 cite and reward the search of the antiquarian. But in these pursuits my 

 I iithusiasm is over ; or, if ever to be reawakened, it must be by such asso- 



