THE TRADITIONS OF NATIONAL GLORY. 385 



both banks of the Nile. The women, with dishevelled 

 hair, uttering plaintive cries, and wailing, according to 

 the ancient custom of eastern mourners ; whilst the 

 men fired off guns, as when rendering the last honours 

 at the funeral of some distinguished personage ; and 

 the vessel was thus escorted as far as Koptos, a distance 

 of some thirty miles down the river. * 



As Mr. Villiers Stuart has remarked "surely a more 

 touching tribute was never paid them, even at the 

 height of their power, than this spontaneous outburst 

 of feeling from the hearts of the people. After cen- 

 turies of oppression, they still cherished traditions of 

 the splendid past, when monarchs of their own led 

 them to victory, and made their country, through long 

 ages, the mistress of the East. " f 



This incident shows how immortal are the traditions 

 of national glory. More enduring than the marble 

 that builds the shrine, its lustre is undimmed by the 

 lapse of ages. Empires have risen and fallen great 

 nations have been born, have nourished, and passed 

 away, whilst these mighty men of old slept fast, in 

 that great untroubled sleep of more than 3000 years ; 

 during which the deathless fame of these ancient heroes 

 still lived unforgotten and untarnished, in the hearts 

 of the people. 



Remarkable, too, is the fact that though the reigns 

 of these princes were generally stormy and though 

 the world itself may then have seemed too small for 

 their ambition, and though extravagance, misrule and 

 oppression were the general characteristics of their govern- 

 ment the records of their faults and their follies have been 



* See Baedeker's Handbook for UpJ>er Egyjpt, 1892, p, 29. 



f Egypt After the War, by Villiers Stuart, M.P., 1883, p. 172. 



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