We are told (vide page 271 note,) that Captain Franklin is going, or has offered to go, to the Pole. This, with the Reviewer, is also so easy a job, that a person can go, in an hermaphrodite boat and sledge, from Hackluyt's Head to the Pole, leave his mark, I suppose, and come back again in three months. It is true the distance is only 1200 geographical miles, or 1500 in a straight line; but I presume it cannot so easily be made, to say nothing of the labour, the peril, the chance of delays, &c. The Reviewer would hardly undertake such a journey, because he has not seen, nor does he know what the nature of the icy climes is. I refer him to the "youths of ages to come," to perform this journey in the way he lays down for it; for I doubt whether the youths of the present age are capable of undertaking, in summer too, what would be at best most perilous and uncertain if attempted in winter, which is the only time to try it.

J. D. C.

A DREAM, BY T. CAMPBELL.

WELL may sleep present us fictions,
Since our waking moments teem
With such fanciful convictions
As make life itself a dream.-
Half our daylight faith 's a fable;
Sleep disports with shadows too,
Seeming in their turn as stable
As the world we wake to view.
Ne'er by day did Reason's mint
Give my thoughts a clearer print
Of assured reality,

Than was left by Phantasy
Stamp'd and colour'd on my sprite
In a dream of yesternight.

In a bark, methought, lone steering,
I was cast on Ocean's strife,

This, 'twas whisper'd in my hearing,
Meant the sea of life.

Sad regrets from past existence
Came, like gales of chilling breath;
Shadow'd in the forward distance
Lay the land of death.

Now seeming more, now less remote,
On that dim-seen shore, methought,

I beheld two hands a space
Slow unshroud a spectre's face;
And my flesh's hair upstood,-
'Twas mine own similitude.

But my soul revived at seeing
Ocean, like an emerald spark,
Kindle, while an air-dropt being
Smiling steer'd my bark.

Heaven-like-yet he look'd as human

As supernal beauty can,

More compassionate than woman,
Lordly more than man.

And as some sweet clarion's breath

Stirs the soldier's scorn of death

So his accents bade me brook

The spectre's eyes of icy look,

Till it shut them-turn'd its head.

Like a beaten foe, and fled.

"Types not this," I said, "fair Spirit!
That my death-hour is not come?
Say, what days shall I inherit?-
Tell my soul their sum."

"No," he said, "yon phantom's aspect,
Trust me, would appal thee worse,
Held in clearly measured prospect:-
Ask not for a curse!

Make not, for I overhear

Thine unspoken thoughts as clear
As thy mortal ear could catch

The close-brought tickings of a watch-
Make not the untold request

That's now revolving in thy breast.

""Tis to live again, remeasuring
Youth's years, like a scene rehearsed,
In thy second life-time treasuring
Knowledge from the first.

Hast thou felt, poor self-deceiver !
Life's career so void of pain,
As to wish its fitful fever
New begun again?

Could experience, ten times thine,
Pain from Being disentwine-
Threads by fate together spun ?

Could thy flight heaven's lightning shun?
No, nor could thy foresight's glance

'Scape the myriad shafts of chance.

"Would'st thou bear again Love's trouble-
Friendship's death-dissever'd ties;

Toil to grasp or miss the bubble

Of Ambition's prize?

Say thy life's new-guided action

Flow'd from Virtue's fairest springs

Still would Envy and Detraction
Double not their stings?

Worth itself is but a charter

To be mankind's distinguish'd martyr."
I caught the moral, and cried, "Hail,

Spirit! let us onward sail

Envying, fearing, hating none,

Guardian Spirit, steer me on!"

LETTERS FROM THE EAST.-NQ. v.

Grand Cairo.

NoT far from the city, on the way to the Desert, is the burial-place of the Mamelukes, the most splendid cemetery in Egypt. Here repose the Beys, with their followers, for many generations. The forms of the tombs are various and fantastic, and often magnificent; over the sepulchres rise domes which are supported by slender marble columns, and some of these are finely carved. The tombs of the Caliphs are a mile and a half in another direction from the city, amidst the sand; they are beautiful monuments in the elegant and fantastic style of the Arabian architecture, and are in a very perfect state of preservation. They are built of fine lime-stone, and are lofty square buildings,

with domes and minarets; some of the latter are of exquisite workmanship.

One day I met a marriage-procession in the streets, conducting a young Egyptian bride to her husband. A square canopy of silk was borne along, preceded by several friends and slaves, all women, and three men followed with the tambourines and pipe. Two female relatives, who walked beside the bride, held the canopy over her; she was shrouded from head to foot, so closely and ungracefully, that not the least beauty of figure was discernible, and a thick white veil concealed her features, two holes only being left for her dark eyes to look through. Beneath this coarse exterior the richest dresses are often worn; but all is sacred, both form and feature, and splendid attire, till arrived in the harem of the bridegroom, when the disguise is suddenly thrown off, and his impatient looks are bent painfully or delightfully on his dear unknown. This procession moved at a very slow pace to the sounds of the music, and the lively cries of joy of the women.

Grand Cairo is encompassed by a wall, which is about ten miles in circumference, and of great antiquity. Mount Mokatam stands near the city, of which, and the whole country, it commands a most extensive prospect. This mountain is of a yellow colour, and perfectly barren. Beneath, and in a very elevated position, is the citadel, which is of great extent, and in many parts very ruinous. This fortress is now more famous for the massacre of the Mame uke Beys, than for any other event. The Mameluke force in Cairo consisted of from five to ten thousand choice troops, commanded by their various beys. It was a novel and splendid spectacle to a stranger to view the exercises, the rich accoutrements, and capital horsemanship of the Mamelukes, which were exhibited every day in the great square of the city. The chiefs and Mahmoud were constantly jealous of each other: he longed to curtail or destroy their power, and they dreaded his unprincipled ambition. After this state of affairs had lasted a good while, sometimes in open hostility, or maintaining a hollow friendship, the Pacha professed the most entire and cordial reconciliation, terms of amity were agreed on, and he invited the beys to a splendid banquet in the citadel. The infatuation of these unfortunate men was singular, in trusting to the protestations of a man whose faithless character they knew so well. It was a beautiful day, and the three hundred chiefs, on their most superb coursers and in their costliest robes, entered the long and winding pass that conducts to the citadel. This pass was so narrow, as to oblige each horseman to proceed singly, and broken and precipitous rocks rose on each side. The massy gate of entrance of the pass was closed on the last Mameluke, and the long file of chiefs, in their pride and splendour, yet broken by the windings of the defile, proceeded slowly to the gate of the citadel, which was fast shut. From behind the

rocks above opened at once a fire of musketry so close and murderous, that the unhappy chiefs gazed around in despair; they drew their sabres, and as their coursers pranced wildly beneath their wounds, each bey was heard to utter a wild shriek as he sank on the ground, and in a short time all was hushed. Mahmoud heard from his apartment in the citadel the tumult and outcries; and never were sounds more welcome to his ear. This massacre completely broke the power of the Mamelukes; on the loss of their chiefs the troops fled from VOL. VII. No. 42.-1824.

71

Cairo. A second piece of treachery of the same kind was afterwards executed by Ibrahim, the Pacha's eldest son: by the most solemn promises he prevailed on these fugitives to descend from the mountain where they had taken refuge in Upper Egypt, and meet him on the plain. One of the Mamelukes, an uncommonly handsome young man, afterwards governor of Ramla in Palestine, told us the tale, during our audience of him, of that scene of murder and treachery, when, hemmed in on all sides by Ibrahim's numerous forces, after most of his comrades had fallen, he with a few more cut his way through the Turks, and escaped. The death of the beys at Cairo, however cruelly achieved, was the only means of confirming the power of Mahmoud, which was continually disturbed by their plots and jealousies.

In one of the streets of this city daily stand a large number of asses for hire immediately on entering it, you are assailed and hemmed in by the keepers on every side, each recommending his own animal. They are handsome little creatures, of a quite different breed from those of Europe, with elegant saddles and bridles; some are of a pure white or black colour, and they are used by all ranks, and go at a rapid rate. You pay so much by the hour, and the Arab master, with a long stick in his hand, runs behind or beside you. It is amusing enough to gallop in this way through the crowded streets of Cairo, at one time avoiding, by the dexterity of the Arab, a tall camel, or a soldier mounted, on a fine charger, at another jostling foot-passengers, or encountering numbers alike mounted with yourselves, while the Arab attendant shews infinite dexterity in warding off obstacles, calling out loudly all the time to clear the way.

In the citadel is a celebrated well, which goes by the name of Joseph's Well; it is near three hundred feet deep, and thirty or forty in circumerence. The descent to it is by a long winding gallery, and you meet at every turning with men and cattle conveying the water above. The water is raised by means of large wheels, which are worked by buffaloes; it must have been a work of prodigious labour to execute, being all cut out, both gallery and well, of the solid rock. The hall of Joseph is also shewn in the citadel, but the pillars which support it are evidently of Arabian architecture; the granaries of the patriarch, where he deposited the Egyptians' corn, we could not see, as the pacha had made a storehouse of them.

The consul-general gave me a letter to M. Caviglia, a Frenchman, who had resided some time at the Pyramids, where he was most ardently engaged in prosecuting discoveries. M. C. came to Cairo one day from his desert abode, and invited me warmly to return with him. We set out soon after two o'clock, the heat being intense. We crossed the Nile to the village of Gizeh: the direct route to the Pyramids is only ten miles; but the inundation made it near twenty, and obliged us to take a very circuitous course; yet it was a most agreeable one, leading at times through woods of palm and date-trees, or over barren and sandy tracts, without a vestige of population. Fatigued with heat and thirst, we came to a few cottages in a palm-wood, and stopped to drink of a fountain of delicious water. In this northern climate no idea can be formed of the exquisite luxury of drinking in Egypt: little appetite for food is felt, but when, after crossing the burning sands, you reach the rich line of woods on the brink of the Nile, and pluck the fresh limes, and,

mixing their juice with Egyptian sugar and the soft river water, drink repeated bowls of lemonade, you feel that every other pleasure of the senses must yield to this. One then perceives the beauty and force of those similes in Scripture, where the sweetest emotions of the heart are compared to the assuaging of thirst in a sultry land..

The Nile, in its overflow, had encompassed many villages and their groups of trees, and was slowly gathering round cottage and grove and lonely palm. Its fantastic course was beautiful, for its bosom was covered with many green isles of every possible form; here a hamlet seemed floating on the wave, above which hung the foliage and fruit of various trees, the stems being shrouded beneath; there it warred with the Desert, whose hills of sand, rocks, and ruins of temples, looked like so many mournful beacons in the watery waste. We passed several very long causeways, erected over the flat land to preserve a passage amidst the inundation; and the sun set as we entered on the long expanse of soft sand, in the midst of which the Pyramids are built. The red light resting for some time on their enormous sides, produced a fine effect: for a long while we seemed at no great distance from them, but the deception of their size on the flat expanse of the Desert long misled us, and it was dark before we arrived. As we drew near, we heard the loud voice of welcome from the Arabs, who came out of the apartments of the rock on which the Pyramids stand, and surrounded us. We ascended a narrow winding path to a long and low chamber in the rock, that had formerly been a tomb. Here M. Caviglia, his assistant M. Spinette, a German, and myself, sat down on the floor, and supped on some boiled fowl and Nile water; and, being very much fatigued, they soon left me to my repose. One of the Arabs placed a small light in the wall of this antique abode, and, throwing myself on my hard bed of reeds, I tried to obtain some sleep; yet the novelty of my situation, the thought of being at last on the spot around which imagination had so long been passionately wandering, made it long a stranger to my eyes.

The next morning, at sunrise, we took our coffee at one of the natural windows of this cavern, that looked over the plain. My servant, who had followed the day before with the tent, lost his way, and did not arrive till midnight; and being unable to find either dwelling or inhabitant, he wandered about the Pyramids, shouting and firing his pistols, till at last he lay down in one of the deep holes in the sand, and sheltered himself till sunrise. In the course of the day we visited several of M. C.'s excavations; one was a small and beautiful gateway of fine white stone, covered with hieroglyphics, and of so fresh a colour that it seemed but lately erected. Descending about sixty feet, we entered three subterraneous apartments, one of which contained two large coffins, side by side, cut out of the rock; some little idols only were found in them there was also a very curious square room, or place of tombs, the wall covered with figures, discovered by Mr. Salt. M. Caviglia is at present engaged in what would be generally considered an almost hopeless undertaking; he believes there is a subterraneous communication between the Pyramids of Gizeh and those of Saccara and the remains of Memphis, the former fifteen miles off, the latter a few miles He is sanguine of success in his attempts to discover this passage, and has proceeded some hundred yards in his excavation of the

nearer.