ere at bottom something different, and
the difference became the more accentuated as the foreign elements
increased. The people were thus gradually divested of the character
which had distinguished them before the conquest of Syria; the
dispositions and defects imported from without counteracted to such
an extent their own native dispositions and defects that all marks of
individuality were effaced and nullified. The race tended to become more
and more what it long continued to be afterwards,--a lifeless and inert
mass, without individual energy--endowed, it is true, with patience,
endurance, cheerfulness of temperament, and good nature, but with little
power of self-government, and thus forced to submit to foreign masters
who made use of it and oppressed it without pity.

The upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses. The feudal
nobles who had expelled the Shepherds, and carried the frontiers of
the empire to the banks of the Euphrates, seemed to have expended their
energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist. As long as
Egypt was restricted to the Nile valley, there was no such disproportion
between the power of the Pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to
prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when
occasion arose, even against the monarch. The conquest of Asia, while it
compelled them either to take up arms themselves or to send their
troops to a distance, accustomed them and their soldiers to a passive
obedience. The maintenance of a strict discipline in the army was the
first condition of successful campaigning at great distances from the
mother country and in the midst of hostile people, and the unquestioning
respect which they had to pay to the orders of their general prepared
them for abject submission to the will of their sovereign. To their
bravery, moveover, they owed not only money and slaves, but also
necklaces and bracelets of honour, and distinctions and offices in
the Pharaonic administration. The king, in addition, neglected no
opportunity for securing their devotion to himself. He gave to them
in marriage his sisters, his daughters, his cousins, and any of the
princesses whom he was not compelled by law to make his own wives. He
selected from their harems nursing-mothers for his own sons, and this
choice established between him and them a foster relationship, which
was as binding among the Egyptians and other Oriental peoples as one of
blood. It was