n the
banks of the Nile, and the road to it from Cairo is a broad but shady
avenue, formed of sycamores, of noble growth and colour; on one side
delightful glimpses of the river, with its palmy banks and sparkling
villages, and on the other, after a certain tract of vivid vegetation,
the golden sands of the desert, and the shifting hillocks which it
forms; or, perhaps, the grey peaks of some chain of pyramids.

The palace of Shoubra is a pile of long low buildings looking to the
river--moderate in its character, and modest in its appointments; but
clean, orderly, and in a state of complete repair; and, if we may
use such an epithet with reference to oriental life, comfortable. It
possesses all the refined conveniences of European manners, of which the
pasha at the time I am referring to was extremely proud. Most of these
had been the recent gift of the French government, and his highness
occasionally amused his guests--some sheikh from Arabia, or some emir
from the Lebanon--by the exhibition of some scientific means of domestic
accommodation with which use has made us familiar, but which I was
assured had sensibly impressed the magnates of the desert and the
mountain with the progress of modern civilisation.

The gardens of Shoubra, however, are vast, fanciful, and kept in
admirable order. They appeared to me in their character also entirely
oriental. You enter them by long, low, winding walks of impenetrable
shade; you emerge upon an open ground sparkling with roses, arranged in
beds of artificial forms, and leading to gilded pavilions and painted
kiosks. Arched walks of orange trees, with the fruit and the flowers
hanging over your head, lead again to fountains, or to some other
garden-court, where myrtles border beds of tulips, and you wander on
mosaic walks of polished pebbles. A vase flashes amid a group of dark
cypresses, and you are invited to repose under a Syrian walnut tree by a
couch or a summer-house.

The most striking picture, however, of this charming retreat is a lake
surrounded by light cloisters of white marble, and in its centre a
fountain of crocodiles, carved in the same material. That material as
well as the art, however, are European. It was Carrara that gave the
pure and glittering blocks, and the Tuscan chisel called them into life.
It is a pity that the honourable board of directors, in their recent
offering of the silver fountain to the pasha, had not been aware of
the precedent thus afford