honor of some idol, or as a mausoleum of ape or ibex, crocodile or lizard! Christianity alone can dignify art by faith, and can alone teach us that the heart is the only immortal temple of the Almighty.

The prospects of Egypt, so long given over to a hopeless oppression, seemed to have brightened under the new rule, which in the person of Mehemet Ali, was extended over her. The different representations which English and French writers have made of the tendency of this policy, in accordance with the different political intents of the two countries, as well as the remarkable character of the man himself, seems to demand some brief notice of this memorable ruler.

Eighty-four years ago the obscure Albanian village of Cavalla gave birth to a child of humble parentage, who, in many respects, has been to Egypt what Napoleon was to France. The world-renowned Viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, fittingly commenced his career as a tax-gatherer of the Sultan's tribute in his native province. At the age of thirty, and about the commencement of the present century, he first set foot as a subordinate in the Albanian corps, on the soil which was to become the scene of his future greatness. Already he was regarded as a rising man. A successful speculation in tobacco, and a not less fortunate one in matrimony, had prepared the way for his rapid military promotion to the office of General of Division. The object of the enthusiastic attachment of his Albanian troops, he was successful in his engagements with Napoleon's veterans, who sought in vain to secure for their master the fruitful delta of the Nile. After their expulsion from Egypt, Mehemet Ali began to develop his schemes of ambition, and fully to carry out those vast projects which were to make him the all but in name independent Sultan of Egypt.

The Mamelukes, a numerous and fierce band of mercenaries, alternately overawing their rulers, or tyrannizing over the people, had long been the same curse to Egypt that the Janizaries had once been to Turkey. For more than six centuries this body of highly-disciplined troops, about twelve thousand in number, mostly natives of Circassia, and the remote provinces of Turkey which lie between the Black and the Caspian seas, had controlled the government of Egypt, and ground to the dust, by their extortion and their violence, the unfortunate Fellahs. Aliens in blood from the rest of the Egyptians, powerful in numbers, and rapacious beyond the ordinary rapacity of hireling troops, they were fit instruments with which to extort the last rag from the naked, and the last crust from the hungry. Not content with the license given to their cupidity, they always sought, and often succeeded in making the Pacha their tool.

Mehemet Ali, however, was not the man to submit to a division of power with anybody, much less to become the tool of his own soldiery. After years of difficulty and contention, with true barbarian policy, he determined upon their extermination. Taking occasion from the public investiture of his son with the command of the army to be sent against the Wahabees of Arabia, who had taken possession of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Mehemet Ali invited that portion of the Mamelukes who were encamped near Cairo, to be present at the festival. Leading from the immense fortress of the city is

a long defile, surrounded by high walls, and terminated by a colossal gateway. The Mamelukes, who had been welcomed by the Pacha with unwonted hospitality, and whose good cheer was still moist upon their lips, had just mounted their splendid chargers, and were gayly prancing through the narro defile, when the gates were closed, and a murderous fire was opened upon them by Mehemet's Albanian troops. From parapet and tower destruction was poured down upon the helpless and too-confiding Mamelukes. A few moments sufficed for the work of death. The Pacha, seated where he could observe the bloody scene, but hidden from view, saw the power that for six centuries had oppressed the land, destroyed in a moment. The rest of the Mamelukes, already greatly reduced in number by the wars which had desolated the country, and scattered at different posts, fell victims to the same treacherous fate. Nearly six hundred of these dreaded oppressors were slain under Mehemet's eye at Cairo.

A single Mameluke escaped. Detained in the city, Amin Bey awaited the troop outside the gate; seeing it shut, he suspected treachery, and spor ring his horse over the ramparts, a precipitous descent of forty feet, he escaped with his life by the sacrifice of his noble charger, who was killed by the leap. This act, so consonant to Eastern habits, and so odious to ours, Mehemet Ali always justified as a political necessity. Treachery to the country, in conspiring to make over Egypt to the English, and deadly hostility to his own person and government, were the defenses upon which he relied for his vindication. Whatever may be thought of the morality of the act, the country has, doubtless, been a gainer by their extermination. A single tyrant, when his views are comprehensive, may accomplish much good. Twelve thousand tyrants are an unmitigated curse to any country. Mehemet Ali next undertook to introduce the European dress and drill among his soldiers, but, at first, unsuccessfully. All Cairo was in an uproar; his troops became mutinous, murdered their officers, and plundered the city. Mehemet had gone too far, and must recede. His Albanians were restored to their beloved width of breeches, beside being pardoned for their excesses. The Pacha, however, adhered no less firmly to his original design. A levy of Egyptian youth was soon made, and, under the energetic drill of French officers, Mehemet soon possessed a disciplined army of eighty thousand men, able to compete with European troops, and far superior to any force ever before known in the East.

The Pacha was not less successful in his efforts to form an Egyptian navy. The ruin of his first fleet was accomplished at Navarino. A second fleet of more than fifty vessels, twenty of which were ships of the line, or frigates, soon testified to the wonderful energy and resources of the man. With such material for the accomplishment of his plans, Mehemet Ali has waged successful war against Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans; Arabia, Nubia, and Syria have each contributed to give solidity to his well-earned military fame. The conquest of the latter, involving as it did, war with his nominal master, the Sultan of Turkey, called for all his resources. His success in this campaign shook the throne of Constantinople, and the poor tax-gatherer of Cavalla might have ascended the throne of the Caliphs, had not the European

powers interfered for the protection of their own interests. Compelled to surrender his Syrian conquests, he still succeeded in procuring for himself the hereditary lordship of Egypt. Virtually independent, the rulers of Egypt henceforth acknowledged no other dependence upon Turkey than the payment of the annual tribute to the Sultan.

The military successes of Mehemet Ali, however, form but an insignificant part of his claims to public notice. His gigantic projects for the development of the resources of the country, and the considerable success which attended them, have long ago given him a wide celebrity. Wherever his authority extended, there the foreign traveler was sure of protection. Amid the wild Nubians, in the remote parts of Upper Egypt, in the trackless desert of Arabia, and amid the once lawless population of Cairo, the traveler was made safe in purse and person. The solitary pilgrim to the shrine of the false prophet, equally with the christian pilgrim to the sacred places of the holy city, was everywhere guarded by the dread which the name of Mehemet Ali inspired.

Gratitude for such protection has led travelers to speak more favorably of him than the facts seem to justify. He made his government an absolute despotism, and this of itself is decisive as to the permanent value of his reign to Egypt. The character of each successive Pacha necessarily determines the measure in which his people shall be prosperous and happy. Not one movement of further progress in arts, in commerce, or in agriculture, can be guaranteed to such a country beyond the life of its present ruler. The Pacha of to-day may be a wise, patriotic, and humane man. Under him, industry, secure of its reward, will everywhere flourish. His successor of to-morrow, may be a cruel, sanguinary monster. At once the ingenuity and the enterprise of a people begin to wither and die. Exaction and violence have destroyed hope, the only incentive to labor. In all that Mehemet Ali did, he failed to do the one thing, without which, everything else was of little value.

Had he aimed to render permanent his reforms in Egypt by such institutions as were in his power, his name might have gone down to posterity as a herald of civilization and a benefactor of his race. Some good he unquestionably did. He united Alexandria to Cairo by a canal, and thus developed the agriculture of a fruitful region, by giving it a constant and lucrative market. He improved the breed of sheep and horses by the importation of foreign stock, and by judicious crossing. He practiced an entire religious toleration, and gave his aid and countenance to European scholars, artisans and merchants. He introduced vaccination, and stopped the ravages of the plague and cholera by well-administered quarantine laws. Sugar refineries, saltpeter manufactories, cannon founderies, and cotton factories were among the fruits of his long reign. Dye-shops and print-works, the manufacture of various fabrics of woolen, cotton and silk, gave a strange aspect to this country of the Pharaohs. To the observer who looks only on the surface of things, a new day of hope, of industry and growth seemed to have dawned upon Egypt. His highly disciplined army, his well-appointed navy, manufacturing establishments of various kinds, and the before unknown safety of the stranger from violence, seemed to indicate that this earliest of civilized

lands had begun to renew her youth, and that under the new dynasty she was once more to become a powerful nation.

Turn over the page, and how great the contrast. In the forty years of Mehemet Ali's authority over Egypt, her population has been diminished one-half! What a tale of wrong and oppression does this single fact unfold. War, the very element of the Pacha's life, has exhausted the manhood of the land. A merciless conscription has accomplished what neither a foreign invasion nor civil oppression could have done. Whenever the Pacha needed more troops, a new levy was ordered, and recruiting bands everywhere pene trated the land; the mechanic was seized in his shop, the laborer in his field, and the miserable Fellah was borne away from the midst of his disturbed family. The sight of a soldier was a sign for the wretched inhabitants to hide themselves. Festivals and funerals were deserted through fear of the conscriptions. An anecdote from the Foreign Quarterly Review will illustrate the crafty way in which his army was sometimes recruited. “He induced a Christian slave, in one of the large villages of Egypt to commit an offense against the Mohammedan religion, the penalty of which was death. The man was promised not only that he should not lose his life, but also that if he played his part well to the last, he should receive a handsome reward. The Christian was tried with great ceremony, and sentenced to die. The governor, who was in the secret, ordered that the execution should take place with unusual pomp, as the offense was one which excited great indignation among the faithful; and to do honor to the ceremony, and under pretense that a rescue might be attempted, several hundred soldiers were marched into the village without exciting suspicion. On the day appointed for the execution, the peasantry of the country, for miles round, flocked into the town. The man was tied up, and the signal for execution had only to be given, when, suddenly, the soldiers closed upon the populace, and driving out all the women and children, and the old men, bound the rest, and marched them off. It is but just to say, that the supposed culprit was released, thus showing that Mehemet Ali could keep faith. If he had chosen to break it, the poor fellow might have been executed without having an opportunity of imploring the despot to spare the life which he had solemnly promised to preserve."

This anecdote sufficiently illustrates the cost at which the armies of Mehemet Ali were recruited, and what an expense of terrorism and life his system was successful in imposing upon Europeans by the appearance of vigor, such vigor as necessarily attends upon the plans of sagacious barbarians, bent upon witnessing immediate results of his policy.

Mehemet Ali died in the year 1849, after a stormy and most eventful career in Egypt of forty-nine years. His step-son Ibrahim Pacha, evinced during his short possession of the Pachalic, considerable military, but little civic talent. The reforms of his father were suffered to languish, and now under the rule of Abbas Pacha, the grandson of Mehemet Ali, and a dissolute, debauched young man, Egypt is fast relapsing into the same wretched condition in which the Albanian mercenary found it more than half a century

ago.

HISTORICAL and Descriptive Sketch-Belfast-Linen Manufacture-A Primitive PreacherThe Round Towers-Jaunting car-Londonderry-Dublin-Misery of the People-Limerick-Irish Wit-Lakes of Killarney-Anecdote-Father Mathew and his ReformsCauses of the degradation of the Irish-Vicious Legislation-Indolence and Improvidence-Intolerance-Oppressive Ecclesiastical System-Absenteeism-Evictions.

IRELAND has an area of 32,000 square miles: about equal to the State of Maine. It is divided into the four great provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught: these are divided into thirty-two counties. Two centuries since, the population of Ireland was but a trifle over one million; in 1841, it was over eight millions.

The face of the country affords a pleasing variety of surface. In some parts there are rich and fertile plains, watered by large and beautiful streams, while in other parts, hills are found in frequent succession, which agreeably diversify the scenery. The level parts are generally in the center of the island, where an extensive plain, comprising nearly a third of Ireland, extends from sea to sea. The hilly parts, in general, admit of culture a considerable

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