up a few steps, and entered a room, where stood chained, with his hushy mane, an enormous red lion. There was no grate, as at the Surrey or Regent Park gardens, to impede our view, and I did not feel particularly pleasant to be in the same room with a lion just fresh from the deserts of Dongola, with only a few iron links to prevent him from making his breakfast of his visitors; but imagine my terror when the keeper, after having displayed some feats of animal taming that far excelled Van Amburgh, left him, and while I was gazing into his eyes, he rose and made a leap, snapping one end of his chain. I was near the door, and in an instant I was out, and the keeper against the door, which his attendants without secured, while he was standing up and pointing to the corner for the lion to go back to his chain. I was fairly frightened, and rushed down the steps leading into the street, glad enough to escape.

I went from here to see the bastinado. I found there an imperturbable Englishman from our hotel, who was always there, I believe. He had invited me frequently to go up with him and see one, as, he said, it gave him an appetite for his dinner. For my part, it was disgusting to me. The kourbash is very painful for the first two or three blows, but after, it is scarcely felt, in comparison. The Mohammedan who takes his bath so frequently, and has the soles of his feet made so tender by the rubbing, must be peculiarly sensitive there.

The Ghourah bazaar and its rare attractions have been well descanted on by travellers; though not excelling in richness the shawl bazaar of Constantinople, and some others there, it is fuller of various life. Every nation in the world, almost, is represented here: Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Hindoos, Ethiopians, Abyssinians, Circassians; and Turkish and Arabian women, less veiled than those in Constantinople. The perfumery bazaar, with its quaint orientalism; the carpet and mat bazaar, with its Turks bearded like Abraham; the Hamzaja bazaar; the handkerchief and embroidery bazaar; the bazaar of arms; the Hanhalil; the Settizenab, and its Bedouins of the desert caravans; the Bab-el-Nasr, and ancient gate of the vanquishers of the Crusaders; the Ghu-a-hinneh; the palaces of the old Beys, and rare Turkish life in the old quarter: all this is well described in Mr. Lane's Book of the Modern Egyptians, and you may see it recorded and pictured in his fine edition of the Illustrated Arabian Nights. Mr. Lane is one of the foreign lions of Cairo, but keeps himself very secluded, being industriously engaged on a large Arabic dictionary—a great desideratum to oriental scholars. He lives with his sister, Mrs. Poole, author of "The Englishwoman in Egypt;" whose son has been well praised by Miss Martineau, as, for a young Egyptian hieroglyphical scholar, he is almost unexcelled.

The days of chivalry, as D'Israeli makes Baron Rothschild say, were not different from ours. "Life then was a circle of great ideas; now 'tis a circle of small ones." Instead of Richard Cosur de Lion and Saladin, it is a Consul General and a brutal Abbas Pacha. Instead of a noble Arab, as Scott has represented in his Talisman, it is a quarrelsome Reis and his quarrelsome crew; a swindling dragoman trying to pocket your piastres, and suiting all his plans and purposes to that end. As to what modern Egyptian life is, I cannot improve upon Mr. Lane's description of the " Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," and the notes that are scattered through his edition of the "Arabian Nights;" and it is superfluous to repeat in this brief and rapid sketch what others have spent more than a quarter of a century in describing. A half day's walk through Cairo sufficed to prove the remarkable accuracy of Lane's work.

My first week in Cairo was actively employed in sight seeing, and whirling around its narrow streets, with a donkey boy crying, Riglac ok bente—" get out of the way, oh lady;" or Riglac nousrami, "get out of the way, Christian ;"—Riglac baudour, "get out of the way, you other donkey-boy."

There is no lack of amusement in all these oddities; and as for the sights, from the Mohammedan betrothal and wedding, with all its grotesque masquerading, and symbols, and Alme's dancing, et id genus, to the circumcision with its drums, &c., the pure orientalism of the turban—the black turban of the Copt and his huge sensual neck, the bright eyes of an Arab from the shores

"Off Mozambic or where the spicy odors blow.
From Araby the blest,"

how shall I describe them? There too was the Memlook dress, and its owner glittering with arms and proudly ferocious in gait; the naming Cairean robes of striped silk adorning the Turk or the Jew; the Egyptian lady with her mantle of black silk, which is also worn by many Italians and French.

Camels loaded with stones come along threatening to crush you and your donkey; water-carriers, beggars, santons; Turks sitting in their bazaars, crying, Thayeeb Mashallah; Greeks looking for a chance to turn a penny or to blackguard you: Arabs of every variety, from the Hadji of Mecca, the sheikh of the desert, to the boatman and camel-driver; ukmah or sellers of sherbet, serpent charmers with their snakes, orange women, and other women with their caps or wares; beggars, barbers, pedlers of robes from Damascus, fortune-tellers, jugglers, mountebanks, fakirs, merchants and mollahs, Mohammedan priests, barbers and butchers, saddlers and slippermakers, in the narrow dingy streets—there are they all.

Dr. Abbofs Museum.—This is one of the great curiosities of Cairo. Lepsius has said that the museum is worth £7000. His price is £10,000.

Among the many objects of interest is the necklace bearing on several of the links the cartouche of Menes of the first dynasty, "who walks with Amon," a seal ring of gold, with a broad face, on which in most exquisite engraving is the cartouche of Souphis or Cheops of the fourth dynasty. An iron breastplate and chain, much covered with rust, has the name of Shishak or Sheshonk, who vanquished Jeroboam. Some of his curiosities, a lizard in metal, and some sculptures in limestone, are the most beautiful I have ever seen. His mummied bulls and human mummies, his rings and thousand cartouches, are antiquities of several dynasties. His mummied cats, and particularly his papyri, are very perfect. There is one containing a ritual, which is very valuable. Numerous steles or tablets of the times of the shepherd kings, &c., are full of historical interest.

The Egyptian Literary Association, of which Dr. Abbot is one of the founders, and Clot Bey, Suleiman Pacha, and several learned Europeans, members, is one of the finest institutions in the world for the study of Egyptian subjects.

The tombs of the Memlook kings to the south of old Cairo and toward the Arabian desert in the east, are an interesting necropolis. Familiar as I was with Mohammedan cemeteries in Constantinople, Scutari and Pera, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, I could not but compare the beauty of those upon which "Anastasius" so poetically dwells, with this forest of turbaned-headed lombstones in the skirts of the lonely desert. Here are the interesting tombs of the Memlook kings in a walled court, covered with flowered ornaments of brilliant colors and Arabic inscriptions. But the finest specimens of arabesque I saw in the tombs of the Pachas: those of Mohammed Ali's family, his wives and sons, particularly that of the lamented and promising Tousson, so spoken of by travellers, were the finest. It is a beautiful thought of orientalism, to place perpetual flowers on the dwellings of the dead. Here was the tomb of Ibrahim covered with a green shroud, for it was not yet completed. Some of the family were here, and many real flowers lay scattered about, and wreaths on the head-stones. What a prolific progenitor Mohammed Ali* has been! he may well vie with Methusaleh, and the other patriarchs, or with Solomon. A large mosque is filled with the tombs of his family, and I should judge that thirty were those of his sons and daughters, his sons' wives, and grandsons and granddaughters.

The Imaum-e-Shuffer is worth visiting.

I also went to the site of the Roman Babylon, which was not far from old Cairo.

The mosque of Tayloom is one of the finest erections of Caliph and Mameluke architecture. I rode my donkey into it, which quite shocked the Mohammedan bystanders.

Spur on my donkey—my Arab boy—to Mataryeh and the sacred tree and fountain of the Holy Family, and then over