power. He is now about forty-five years old. Of his three sons, the youngest, to the great affliction of his father, whose character he most resembled, and whose talents are reported to have been of the highest order, died a short time since, a victim to the plague. The eldest has the government of Mecca, and is combating the Wahabites with great skill and success, almost every day furnishing some detail of his victories. The other son, Ibrahim, assists the Pasha in the administration of the capital, and has the government of Boulac.

The action which chiefly tarnishes the character of Mahomet is the massacre of the Mameluke chiefs. Something like the following attempt at palliation, is circulated by his avowed apologists.-The scattered tribes, when collected en masse, are said to amount to eight or ten thousand, all of them devotedly attached to their respective leaders. From their numbers and desultory habits, they were a constant source of annoyance to the government, and it was a favourite object of Mahomet's policy to win them to his interests; or at least to establish the relations of friendly intercourse: and he has been heard to declare he would willingly have

relinquished one third of his possessions to have effected some accommodation. But all his efforts were fruitless: the chiefs universally rejected his overtures, and would suffer no treaty to be binding. While affairs were in this situation, the period of the annual journey to Mecca was fast approaching: to have neglected this discharge of what is universally regarded as a religious duty, would have put to hazard the allegiance of his native subjects, and must have inevitably produced a rupture with the Porte; and, on the other hand, to leave his capital, exposed to the enterprise of so formidable a band of marauders, would be little less than a virtual surrender of his authority. such exigency he had recourse to one of those barbarous expedients, of which the early history of almost every country may furnish some example. The heads of the different tribes were invited, with the most pressing cordiality, to a solemn banquet at the citadel. On a given signal the gates were closed, and nearly four hundred were massacred by the Albanian guards. The tribes, deprived of their leaders, fled to the mountains of Nubia, and all Egypt is delivered from their depredations. Though the end has been so success

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ful, the means by which it was accomplished are reported to occasion many bitter reflections to the projector; but in a mind so constituted, and occupied by the active administration of an extensive territory, "the access and passage to remorse," is, I suspect, for the most part closed.

LETTER VII.

To SIR G. E-T, BART.

Cairo.

DEAR E-,

EDUCATION, at least that branch of it which has literature for its object, is here very slenderly provided for. Even among the more affluent orders, a large proportion are incapable of writing their native tongue with purity and elegance; and the possession of any foreign language is considered very otherwise than a desirable accomplishment. The influence of such a sentiment is felt most extensively through every gradation of the labouring classes: I have never, indeed, heard it honestly avowed that ignorance is a necessary ingredient in the mixture of civil society; but it is often urged "that no creatures submit contentedly to their equals; and that should a horse

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"know as much as a man, few would desire to be " his rider."1

1 This opinion was insisted on with much earnestness by a writer of some celebrity in the last century, who asserts that "In a free nation where slaves are not allowed of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious poor; for besides that they are the never-failing nursery of fleets and armies, without them there could be no enjoyment, and no product of any country could be valuable. To make the society happy and people easy under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant as well as poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied."

"The welfare and felicity therefore of every state and kingdom, require that the knowledge of the working poor should be confined within the verge of their occupations, and never extended (as to things visible) beyond what relates to their calling. The more a shepherd, a ploughman, or any other peasant knows of the world, and the things that are foreign to his labour and employment, the less fit he will be to go through the fatigues and hardships of it with cheerfulness and content.”

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Reading, writing, and arithmetic, are very necessary to those whose business requires such qualifications, but where peoples' livelihood has no dependence on these arts, they are very pernicious to the poor, who are forced to get their daily bread by their daily labour. Few children make any progress at school, but at the same time they are capable of being employed in some business or other; so that every hour those of poor people spend at their book is so much time lost to the society. Going to school in comparison to