26 AN EGYPTIAN DRAWING-ROOM. 



times, when seclusion and suspicion formed the foreign 

 policy of States, and when national intercourse was 

 scarcely known, invasion was often the pioneer of 

 trade. The wealth of Egypt was not derived from 

 military spoil, which soon dissolves, however large it 

 may appear, but from the new markets opened for 

 their linen goods. 



It is certain that the riches contained in the 

 country were immense. The house of an Egyptian 

 gentleman was furnished in an elegant and costly style. 

 The cabinets, tables, and chairs were beautifully 

 carved, and were made entirely of foreign woods ; of 

 ebony from Ethiopia, of a kind of mahogany from India, 

 of deal from Syria, or of cedar from the heights of 

 Lebanon. The walls and ceilings were painted in 

 gorgeous patterns similar to those which are now 

 woven into carpets. Every sitting room was adorned 

 with a vase of perfumes, a flower-stand and an altar 

 for unburnt offerings. The house was usually one 

 storey high : but the roof was itself an apartment 

 sometimes covered, but always open at the sides. 

 There the house-master would ascend in the evening 

 to breathe the cool wind, and to watch the city waking 

 into life when the heat was past. The streets 

 swarmed and hummed with men; the river was 

 covered with gilded gondolas gliding by. And when 

 the sudden night had fallen, lamps flashed and danced 

 below ; from the house-yards came sounds of laughter 

 and the tinkling of castanets ; from the stream came 

 the wailing music of the boatmen and the soft splash- 

 ing of the lazy oar. 



The Egyptain grandee had also his villa or country 

 house. Its large walled garden was watered by a 

 canal communicating with the Nile. One side of the 



