AND LOWER EGYPT. IO3 



have flat terrace roofs : they have no windows, 

 and the apertures which supply their place are al- 

 most entirely obstructed by a wooden lattice pro- 

 jecting, of various form, and so close, that the light 

 can hardly force a passage. In those countries, 

 more than any where else, such inventions, which 

 transform a mansion into a prison, are real jalousies 

 (jealousies, window-blinds). It is through this 

 grate of iron or wood, sometimes of elegant con- 

 struction, that beauty is permitted to see what is 

 passing without, but eternally deprived of the pri- 

 vilege of being seen ; it is in this state of hopeless 

 seclusion that, far from receiving the homage which 

 nature demands to be paid to it by every being 

 possessed of sensibility, it meets only contempt 

 and outrage ; it is there, in a word, that one part 

 of the human race, abusing the odious right of the 

 more powerful, retains in degrading servitude the 

 other part, whose charms alone ought to have had 

 the power to soften both the ruggedness of the soil 

 and the ferocity of their tyrants. 



Narrow and awkwardly disposed streets are with- 

 out pavement as without police; no public edifice, 

 no private building arrests the eye of the traveller, 

 and, on the supposition that the fragments of the 

 old city liad not attracted his attention, he would 

 find no object in the present one that could supply 



n 4 matter 





