the wide colonnade, near the exquisitely carved pulpit
in the shadow of which an old man who looked like Abraham was swaying to
and fro and whispering his prayers, I thought of Omar Khayyam and how he
would have loved this garden. But instead of water from the white marble
fountain, he would have desired a cup of wine to drink beneath the
boughs of the sheltering trees. And he could not have joined without
doubt or fear in the fervent devotions of the undoubting men, who came
here to steep their wills in the great will that flowed about them like
the ocean about little islets of the sea.

From the "Red Mosque" I went to the great mosque of El-Azhar, to
the wonderful mosque of Sultan Hassan, which unfortunately was being
repaired and could not be properly seen, though the examination of
the old portal covered with silver, gold, and brass, the general
color-effect of which is a delicious dull green, repaid me for my visit,
and to the exquisitely graceful tomb-mosque of Kait Bey, which is beyond
the city walls. But though I visited these, and many other mosques and
tombs, including the tombs of the Khalifas, and the extremely smart
modern tombs of the family of the present Khedive of Egypt, no building
dedicated to worship, or to the cult of the dead, left a more lasting
impression upon my mind than the Coptic church of Abu Sergius, or Abu
Sargah, which stands in the desolate and strangely antique quarter
called "Old Cairo." Old indeed it seems, almost terribly old. Silent and
desolate is it, untouched by the vivid life of the rich and prosperous
Egypt of to-day, a place of sad dreams, a place of ghosts, a place of
living spectres. I went to it alone. Any companion, however dreary,
would have tarnished the perfection of the impression Old Cairo and its
Coptic church can give to the lonely traveller.

I descended to a gigantic door of palm-wood which was set in an old
brick arch. This door upon the outside was sheeted with iron. When it
opened, I left behind me the world I knew, the world that belongs to us
of to-day, with its animation, its impetus, its flashing changes, its
sweeping hurry and "go." I stepped at once into, surely, some moldering
century long hidden in the dark womb of the forgotten past. The door
of palm-wood closed, and I found myself in a sort of deserted town,
of narrow, empty streets, beetling archways, tall houses built of grey
bricks, which looked as if they had turned gradually grey, as hair does