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LETTER XIII.

To H-JE, Esq. M. P.

Alexandria.

DEAR H-N,

AN injury from a fall received at the moment of our arrival here, has made it impracticable for me to extend either my walks or rides to any distance beyond the city walls. What, therefore, under other circumstances would have been one of my first objects,-the scene of Sir R. Abercrombie's victory and death,—I now fear I may be prevented any opportunity of visiting. You will readily believe that I shall not relinquish such intention without sincere reluctance: events, even of the highest national interest, claim our attention more forcibly when accompanied by the reflection, that any one connected with us by the ties of blood or of friendship, had the fortune to be personally concerned,

and to take a distinguished share in the action which produced them.1

To a person who lands at Alexandria by a route direct from Europe, the appearance of the modern town would scarcely repay the fatigue of the voyage. I understand, however, that within these few years it has received a very marked improvement; not merely with reference to the exterior of the buildings, but in those more important points, which affect the advancement of civilization. Since the period of the French invasion, a moral revolution has been silently at work. The mind of the country, if I may be pardoned the pedantry of such an expression, seems prepared to receive a new and powerful impulse. That torpor and lethargy, which many were accustomed to consider as almost inseparably connected with the climate, appears to have been rebuked by the genius of the age. "We cannot, indeed, perceive fibres and nerves, but we can perceive a general beat, a general feeling." Such feeling must be dependent, in great measure, for its increase or depression, on the personal conduct of the individual, who has lately acquired an ascendancy in this division of the Ottoman territories: for the autho

1 Colonel J. - commanded a battalion of the Coldstream Guards on the 21st of March.

rity of the Porte has long ceased to have any thing beyond a nominal recognition, in so distant a quarter of its dominions. Indeed, a sentiment seems generally prevalent, that the sovereignty of the Grand Signior, even in his native metropolis, is rapidly passing away. Persons, who attribute something of a mystic agency to a coincidence of names, have remarked that Constantinople was founded in the fourth century by Constantine the son of Helena, and lost by Constantine the son of another Helena, in the fifteenth, to Mahomet the second. The extinction of the Roman emperors is supposed to have been influenced by a similar fatality; the first being Augustus, and the last Augustulus. The disciple of predestination requires no consequential reasoning. A prophetic warning is now mentioned with some indications of credit, that as the imperial city was subdued by one Mahomet, it will be irretrievably lost by another.

The present ruler of Egypt has many qualities calculated to conciliate the respect, if not the affections of the people. His influence, hitherto, has been felt beneficially. Property is far more secure, and indivi

1 Yet the present Pasha still thinks it necessary so far to preserve appearances, as to transmit pecuniary offerings to Constantinople at stated intervals.

dual rights, (when they do not come in collision with the views of the state,) are infinitely more respected than when the country was parcelled out into minute subdivisions. There is even, ostensibly, a wish on the part of the governing powers to encourage the pursuits of science, and I believe some valuable specimens of ancient art have been rescued in Upper Egypt, by the particular interference of the Pasha: of these I forbear to say any thing at the present moment,-you will probably receive some authentic account respecting them, by a channel well known for the accuracy of its information on all points connected with Egyptian research. I will only beg to call your attention to a few of the surviving relics of antiquity in this immediate neighbourhood, which have escaped alike the ravages of time and the tempest of war, and stood, almost unhurt, amid the general spoliation.

The column usually known by the name of Pompey's pillar, still retains much of its original beauty and freshness: its total height appears from the measurement of M. Fauvel, a French artist, who surveyed it in 1789, to be eighty-eight feet, nine inches. His statement differs only in a very trifling degree from the elaborate observations taken

by the Members of the Commission of Arts, who attended the expedition under Buonaparte. Those savans represent the diameter of the column to be eight feet four inches at the lower part, and seven feet two inches and a fraction near the astragal; and they express their conviction that the four constituent parts of this pillar-the pedestal, base, shaft, and capital— are the productions of different ages. The shaft, from its superior beauty, they assign to the ingenuity of the Greeks under the reign of the Ptolemies :-the other parts are much less perfectly executed, the capital being rudely carved, and the pedestal disproportionately low, and of a granite differing in colour from that of the shaft. It is to be inferred from hence, that the shaft was produced in an age when the arts were still flourishing, and that the ornaments at the extremities being mutilated or destroyed, the present additions were supplied at a later period, when on some particular occasion the monument was re-erected.1

1 Mr. Brown, an Englishman, who visited Egypt early in the last century, calculates the entire structure to contain one hundred and ten feet. The variation in his account from the statement of the French Commissioners arises, probably, from the difference in quantity between the French and English measure.

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