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Addreffed by a Gentleman to his Sifter, on her Return Home from paying him a Vifit.

INCE Harriot, dearest friends must part,

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Permit your brother's tender heart

To with a fafe return;

May, fortune blow with fav'ring gales,

And fill with joy your fwelling fails,

And never, never give the fmalleft caufe to mourn,

Till you this vifit may renew,

May health be ever in your view,

And on your steps attend;

May the protect your future years,

From dire disease and loathfome fears,

And prove your ever-constant, ever-genial friend.

May your fweet child the care repay,
By ever keeping virtue's way,

What you for him endure;
And fhould, your family encreafe,

May their best efforts never cease

Your wants and griefs to leffen, and your joy t'enfure,

In fine, may health be yours indeed,

From ills and forrows ever freed,

Till life itself shall end;

To hear of your prosperity,

Will greatly heighten every joy,

Of him who styles himself your brother and your

friend.

Hackney,

March 18th, 1799.

J. F.

Literary

Literary Review.

Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, undertaken by Order of the old Government of France, by C. S. Sonnini, Engineer in the French Navy, and Member of feveral Scientific and Literary Societies—Illuftrated with Forty Engravings, confifting of Portraits Views, Plans, a Geographical Chart, Antiquities, Plants, Animals, &c. drawn on the Spot, under the Author's Inspection. Tranflated from the French by Henry Hunter, D. D. In Three Volumes. l. 79. Stockdale.

IN

N all ages of the world EGYPT has been a country distinguished for its celebrity; and the recent Expedition of Buonaparte has awakened our curiofity afresh refpecting it. We long to become acquainted with a region of the earth where the greateft of French generals has unfurled his ftandard, and oppofite to the fhores of which the greatest of British admirals has obtained a most unparalleled victory.

This work, though tinctured with no fmall portion of Gallic vanity, yet conveys fome very interefting information. It leads us into a particular knowledge of the customs and manners of the Egyptians, who are, certainly, a very fingular people. Works of this kind are best estimated by extracts-fentiments and style fpeak for themfelves.

The famous city of ALEXANDRIA is thus defcribed: it has been the scene of many a revolution both in ancient and modern times.

VOL. VIII.

R

"The

"The new city, or rather the town of Alexandria, is built, the greatest part of it at least, on the brink of the fea. Its houses, like all thofe of the Levant, have flat terrace roofs: they have no windows, and the apertures which supply their place are almost entirely obftructed by a wooden lattice projecting, of various form, and fo close, that the light can hardly force a paffage. In those countries, more than any where else, fuch inventions, which transform a manfion into a prifon, are real jaloufies (jealoufies, window-blinds). It is through this grate of iron or wood, fometimes of elegant conftruction, that beauty is permitted to fee what is paffing without, but eternally deprived of the privilege of being feen; it is in this state of hopeless feclufion that, far from receiving the homage which nature demands to be paid to it by every being poffeffed of fenfibility, 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 fervitude the other part, whofe charms alone ought to have had the power to foften both the ruggedness of the foil and the ferocity of their tyrants.

"Narrow and aukwardly difpofed flreets, are without pavement as without police; no public edifice, no private building arreft the eye of the traveller, and, on the fuppofition that the fragment of the old city had not attracted his attention, he would find no object in the prefent one that could fupply matter for a moment's thought. Turks, Arabians, Barbarefques, Cophts, Chriftians of Syria, Jews, conftituted a population which may be estimated at five thoufand, as far as an eftimation can be made in a country where there is no register kept of any thing. Commerce attracts thither befides, from all the countries of the east, strangers whofe refidence is extremely tranfient. This motley affemblage of the men of different nations, jealous of, and almoft always hoftile to each other, would prefent to the eye of the obferver a fingular mixture of cuftoms, manners and drefs, if a refort of thieves and robbers could repay the trouble of observation.

"You fee them crowd on each other in the streets, running rather than walking; they likewife bawl rather than fpeak. I have frequently stopped to confider fome perfons who had all the appearance of being agitated by violent rage: they gave to their voice all the intensity which a broad and brawny cheft

could

could fupply; their phyfiognomy wore all the traits of paffion; their eyes fparkled; violent geftures accompanied modes of expreffion which feemed more violent. I approached them under the apprehenfion that they were going inftantly to cut each others throats, and was astonished to learn that they were only driving some petty bargain, that not a word was of a threatening complexion: that their exterior alone was in motion; that, in a word, all this vehemence was only their usual mode of buying and felling.

"This custom of giving to the voice the most powerful inflection of which it is capable, in fpeaking, is common to almost all the caftern nations, the Turks excepted, whose habits and deportment are more grave and compofed. There is no perfon amongst us but who must have remarked that the Jews, that nation which has contrived to preferve its own character and ufages, in the midst of other nations among whom they have been difperfed, likewife fpeak extremely loud, particularly to one another. If you except a few individuals of them, whose constraint, in an affected imitation of our manners, fufficiently evinces that they are not natural to them, you fee them likewife, when they march through our ftreets, with the body ftooping forward, and without bending the knee, taking short but brisk and hurried steps, which come nearer to running than the ufual process of walking. They are found in Egypt, where they live in a state of abjection ftill greater than elsewhere, fuch as we know them to be, avaricious, dexterous, infinuating, and low cheaters. Their depredations are not like thofe of the Bedouins and the other thieves of Egypt, neither committed with manly intrepidity, nor with open violence: they are, as in Europe, ingenious sharping tricks, officious over-reachings which fill their own purse, and, without making a noise, empty that of their neighbour. Such are the Jews wherever I have met with them; in all places their indelible vices of character appear, fo long as they perfift in keeping within the line which they have drawn between themselves and other nations; it is likewife obfervable, that in all places they practise the fame methods, the fame craft, the fame knavery, the real plagues of focial order; in a word, that fame infenfibility, that fame ingratitude, with which they have recently repaid the generofity and magnanimity of the French nation.

R 2

"Some

"Some Jewelles of Alexandria had, during my refidence there, opened their houses for the reception of Europeans; they were deficient neither in beauty nor wit: their fociety was by no means without its allurements, and if there was ground to accuse them of rather an immoderate appetite for filthy lucre, the distinctive characteristic of the male part of their nation, their impofition was at least more palatable, their deceptions lets provoking, and it was no difficult matter to forgive them.

"It is abundantly obvious of what exceffes men are capable, who, in the most ordinary transactions, display the symptoms of fury. When their foul is elevated, when it partakes of the impetuous movements of the body, they difdain all restraint. Like an overbearing torrent, which strikes terror at once by its noife, and by the ravages which it commits, they abandon themselves to all the vehemence of paffion; then it is they really approximate to the favage animals which come to dif pute with them the poffeffion of the fands which they are equally eager and intelligent to stain with blood. Hence the infurrections, the tumultuous riots by which Europeans have often fuffered fo feverely. It is worthy of being remarked, that this irritable character, this proneness to sedition, likewise was, though with lefs rage, that of the ancient inhabitants of Alexandria.

"If there be altars dedicated to the demon of revenge, in Egypt undoubtedly are the temples which contain them: there he is the goddefs, or rather the tyrant of the human heart. Not only the generality of the men, whofe combination conftituted the mafs of the inhabitants, never forgive, but, however fignal the reparation made, they never rest satisfied till they have themselves dipped their hands in the blood of the perfon whom they have declared to be their enemy. Though they smother refentment long, and diffemble till they find a favourable opportunity to glut it, the effects are not the leís terrible: they are not for that more conformable to the principles of reafon. If a European, or, to ufe their term, a Frant, has provoked their animofity, they let it fall without difcrimi nation on the head of a European, without troubling themfelves to enquire whether the party were the relation, the friend, or even the compatriot of the perfon from whom they received the offence: thus they purge their refentment of the

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