ts of El Azhar have rooms outside, but many of them possess no
other shelter than these two courts, where they sleep upon their rugs
spread over the matting or pavement. Food can be brought in at pleasure,
but those two Oriental time-consumers, pipes and coffee, are not allowed
within the precincts. In one of the porches barbers are established;
there is generally a row of students undergoing the process of
head-shaving. The fierce, fanatical blind pupils, so often described in
the past by travellers, are no longer there; the porter can show only
their empty school-room. Blindness is prevalent in Egypt; no doubt the
sunshine of the long summer has something to do with it, but another
cause is the neglected condition of young children. There is no belief
so firmly established in the minds of Egyptian mothers as the
superstition that the child who is clean and well-dressed will
inevitably attract the dreaded evil-eye, and suffer ever afterwards from
the effects of the malign glance. I have seen women who evidently
belonged to the upper ranks of the middle class--women dressed in silk,
with gold ornaments, and a following servant--who were accompanied by a
poor baby of two or three years of age, so dirty, so squalid and
neglected, that any one unacquainted with the country would have
supposed it to be the child of a beggar.

In addition to the bowing motion, instruction at El Azhar is aided by a
mnemonic system, the rules of grammar, and other lessons also, being
given in rhyme. I suppose our public schools are above devices of this
sort; but there are some of us among the elders who still fly mentally,
when the subject of English history comes up, to that useful poem
beginning "First, William the Norman;" and I have heard of the rules for
the use of "shall" and "will" being properly remembered only when set to
the tune of "Scotland's burning!" Surely any tune--even "Man the
Life-boat"--would become valuable if it could clear up the bogs of the
subjunctive.

It must be mentioned that El Azhar did not invent its mnemonics; it has
inherited them from the past. All the mediaeval universities made use of
the system.

The central court is surrounded on three sides by chambers, one of which
belongs to each country and to each Egyptian province represented at the
college. These sombre apartments are filled with oddly-shaped wardrobes,
which are assigned to the students for their clothes. There is a legend
connected with these