In the year

the great passion there has always been, and still is, for possessing them. B.C. 664, if all accounts be true, Assurbanipal, King of Assyria, removed two of them from Thebes to adorn the city of Nineveh. The Romans showed a keen appreciation of obelisks; the one now standing in the Piazza del Popolo was brought from Egypt by command of Augustus, who set it up in the Circus Maximus; and the same place was adorned by Constantius with the huge monolith, the largest of its kind, which now stands in the Piazza of San Giovanni Laterano. The celebrated obelisk of the Vatican was brought to Italy as early as the reign of Caligula, and like that of Monte Cavallo, is remarkable as bearing no hieroglyphics. Altogether there are now twelve obelisks standing in Rome, and it is not at all improbable that others may be lying buried in the earth.

On a high piece of ground near to the vast cemetery stands the most striking monumental relic in Alexandria-Pompey's Pillar. It is a handsome Corinthian column of red granite, from Assouan, 105 feet high including the capital and base, and is believed to be the sole existing relic of the famous Serapeum. It was erected on its present site, overlooking Lake Mareotis and the modern city, in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, some say to commemorate his siege and capture of Alexandria in A.D. 296, after the rebellion of Achilleus, while others, who find a chronological difficulty attaching to this view, say it was erected in commemoration of a gift of corn, presented by Diocletian to the citizens in a time of famine. At the foot of the column are heaps of rubbish, in which are to be found plenty of architectural remains, fragments of columns, portions of sphinxes, and so forth, supposed to have formed part of the Serapeum; and if, as is also supposed, that wonderful temple, once containing the famous library burned by Omar, was surrounded by a colonnade of 400 columns, of which Pompey's Pillar formed one, it is not improbable that the modern scientific excavator may turn up from this site some interesting memorials.

To most people the surroundings of Pompey's Pillar are more interesting than the pillar itself. Close at hand is the Mohammedan Cemetery, a wilderness of stones with neither fence, nor rail, nor any such thing to seclude it from the common roadway. Many of the stones have a turban roughly carved on the top, and some are painted green, showing that the deceased had in his day made a pilgrimage to Mecca, or was a descendant of the Prophet. It is a usual thing to see a group of women sitting round an open grave, rocking themselves to and fro and wailing for the dead; there is no need to draw near to hear the lamentations they make, for the low mournful dirge with which they begin soon increases to a loud monotonous howl; nor is there any need to shed the sympathetic tear, for these women are paid so much for the job, and inspire no more feeling of solemnity than the palls and feathers hanging in an undertaker's shop. do to the passer-by.

A short distance from the cemetery is a well, and it is an interesting and novel sight for the European to watch the people who come hither to draw water. There is a man filling a skin, and a curious appearance it presents as the water fills up the legs and then the body, till the limp skin he held in his hand a few minutes ago assumes the shape of a well-stuffed beast, which he carries away on his shoulder. There stands a group of women, some in the ordinary blue cotton dress, some in white, and all closely veiled,

with their pitchers on their heads, waiting patiently till the men have finished drawing-a scene which Goodall would love to paint. These pitchers, or large earthen jars, called goollehs, are identical with those that have been in use in Egypt for many thousands of years, and are carried in the same fashion on the head. Seeing that until very recent times almost every drop of water used in Egypt for domestic purposes was drawn by women from wells, the river, or canals, in these earthen jars, it is not surprising that huge hillocks of broken pottery have been the distinguishing signs to indicate a buried ancient city. It is estimated that each jar when full of water weighs a little over forty pounds, and it is really surprising with what agility, when the jar is placed upon her head, even a frail young girl will trip off with her burden, apparently almost unaware that she has it there.

Overlooking the cemetery and the road is an Egyptian village, or its equivalent. To the untutored eye it appears to be nothing more or less than a huge mud-heap, and the dwelling-places mere cells burrowed in the mud. The people, happily, seem to dwell outside their houses more than in, and it is well they do, or the population would soon die off, for the dwellings are stifling and filthy, and altogether in a horribly unsanitary condition. It is puzzling to conceive how people who delight in white dresses,

and wear their faces veiled, can by any possibility enter such places without being begrimed; and yet women in apparently spotless raiment may sometimes be seen emerging from them, although the majority, who squat listlessly upon the mud-heaps, are the very picture of filthiness. The children, who are unencumbered with clothes, are not so repulsive, their dark skins giving them an air of tolerable respectability.

In the neighbourhood of the Serapeum are the Catacombs, which suggest a very different train of associations. Of the many tomb-chambers once in existence only one is in a tolerable state of preservation. It was discovered in 1858, when the workmen were engaged in quarrying the rocky ground out of which the Catacombs were hewn. Entering by a flight of ancient steps, the visitor finds himself at the threshold of these chambers. In one there is an apse with the remains of a fresco representing Christ, with Peter and Andrew on either side; in another there are remains of tasteful stucco decoration and paintings in three recesses, representing the Women at the Sepulchre and the Ascension, while in the centre there is a painting of Christ treading upon serpents, and the quotation, in Greek, " He shall tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shall He trample under foot" (Ps. xci. 13). On either side of this central figure is a large Greek cross with the inscription, "Jesus Christ conquers." There is little else to see, for there is now a quarry here, and soon all traces of these Catacombs will have gone; already a lower series of tombs has been closed up, and interesting tomb-chambers, which were open for inspection, have altogether disappeared. It is a pity; but the chambers which remain open up an interesting chapter in Church history to the visitor.

There are very few vestiges of the old canals of Alexandria. The modern Mahmoodieh Canal was constructed by Mehemet Ali in 1819, and was named after the reigning Sultan, Mahmoud. It is said to have cost £300,000; to have employed 250,000 labourers for one year, of whom 20,000 perished by accident, plague, or hunger—a horrible state of things, of which we shall have more to say when writing about the Fellahheen, or peasant population of Egypt, in our account of Cairo. It is interesting to remember that a part of the course of this canal is identical with that of the old Canoptic Branch of the Nile, and the old canal of Fooah, which was used in the time of the Venetians for carrying goods to Alexandria, and existed, though nearly dry, in Savary's time, 1777. On the right bank of the canal are the houses and gardens of wealthy Alexandrians; and here, too, are the public gardens, where are to be found a profusion of exotic plants thriving lustily in the open air, and the fashionable promenade where, when the roads are in a decent state, equipages roll by which would not disgrace the "Ring" in Hyde Park. Of the roads in Alexandria generally, it may be said that they are execrable, while in the old part of the town there are no roads at all. There were once good roads, but they have fallen into decay, as almost everything does under Turkish rule.

Although mosques abound in Alexandria, there are only two which are of any interest. One is called the Mosque of the Thousand-and-one Columns, and is supposed to mark the site of the Church of St. Mark, where the Evangelist is reported to have been put to death. When the crusaders were besieging Damietta, in 1219, this church was destroyed by the Moslems. The Copts have a convent in Alexandria dedicated to St. Mark, and they pretend to have his body preserved there, but there seems to be little doubt that if the body of

Alexandria.]

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the Evangelist rests in any religious edifice at all, it is in that of the Church of St. Mark at Venice. (See p. 127.)

The other mosque of interest is that of St. Athanasius, which in all probability stands upon the site of a church of that name; it was from this mosque that the so-called tomb of Alexander-now in the British Museum-was taken.

There is one spot, two or three miles outside Alexandria, of great historical interest. It is Nicopolis-so named as being the "Town of Victory" where Augustus overcame Antony · and his partisans. "The first battle on this spot was followed by the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra. The second one is famous in the annals of English history. In order to put an end to French supremacy in Egypt an expedition was sent out by the British Government in 1801; part of the troops comprising which, under the command of Sir David Baird, proceeded down the Red Sea with the intention of landing at Kossier and marching across the desert into Egypt, while the remainder, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, disembarked at Aboukir Bay, the scene of Nelson's victory three years before. Advancing on Alexandria, the English attacked the French, under General Menou, on the 13th March. Sir Archibald Alison says, "The ground occupied by the two armies was singularly calculated to awaken the most interesting recollections. England and France were here to contend for the Empire of the East in the cradle of ancient civilisation, on the spot where Pompey was slain to propitiate the victorious arms of Cæsar, and under the walls of the city which is destined to perpetuate to the latest generation the prophetic wisdom of Alexander.' On the 21st of March, 1801, the decisive engagement took place which ended in the defeat of the French, though the victory was dearly purchased by the death of Abercromby."

Alexandria, as we have said, is but the threshold of Egypt-it is ancient compared with Cairo, but it is modern in comparison with that Orientalism which is to be found in Cairo, in a degree unsurpassed by any city of the East.

Origin The First Doge-Venice as it is-The Piazza San Marco-The Church of St. Mark-Removal of the Body of the Saint-Interior of the Church-The Bronze Horses-Barbarossa and the Pope-The Palace of the Doges--The Councils of Venice-The Council of Ten-The Story of Marino Falieri-of Francesco Foscari-of the Count of Carmagnola-The Lion's Mouth-The Golden Book-The Hall of the Grand Council-The Bridge of SighsAgain in the Piazza-The Campanile-"Between the Columns "-The Arsenal and the Arsenalotti-Wedding the