Thebes still remain to be described, a theme more
fertile in interest and instruction than even its palaces and temples.
The arts of the Egyptians must be studied in their tombs, and to learn
how this remarkable people lived, we must even go where they were
buried. To cite no other instances in a sketch which is already too
long, it is from a painting in a tomb near Beni-hassan that we learn how
the Egyptians procured from the distant quarries of Nubia those masses
of stone and granite with which they raised the columns of Karnak and
the obelisks of Luxor.

But we must conclude. We have touched a virgin subject rich with
delightful knowledge, and if our readers be not wearied with wandering
on the banks of the Nile, we may perhaps again introduce them to the
company of the Pharaohs.

SHOUBRA

ORIENTAL palaces, except perhaps in the great Indian peninsula, do not
realise the dreams and glittering visions of the Arabian Nights, or
indeed the authentic histories written in the flush and fullness of
the success of the children of the desert, the Tartar and the Saracen.
Commerce once followed in the train of the conquerors of Asia, and
the vast buildings which they hastily threw up of slight and perishing
materials, were filled, not only with the plunder of the East, but
furnished with all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the
adventurous spirit of man brought from every quarter of the globe to
Samarcand and Bagdad. The site of these mighty capitals is almost erased
from the map of the modern traveller; but tribute and traffic have also
ceased to sustain even the dilapidated serail of the once omnipotent
Stamboul, and, until very recently, all that remained of the splendour
of the Caliphs of Egypt was the vast Necropolis, which still contains
their palatial sepulchres.

How the bold Roumelian peasant who in our days has placed himself on
the ancient throne of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, as Napoleon on
the seat of the Merovingian kings, usurping political power by military
prowess, lodged and contented himself in the valley of the Nile, was
not altogether an uninteresting speculation; and it was with no common
curiosity that some fifteen years ago, before he had conquered Syria and
scared Constantinople, I made one morning a visit to Shoubra, the palace
of Mehemet Ali.

Nothing can be conceived more animated and picturesque than Cairo during
the early morning or at night. It seems the most bust