MISCH-MISCH.

"Wherever we may travel, what a medley is the world!

Like the banner which the Angel to the cribbing knight unfurl'd;
The colors and the texture, and the figures so diverse,

And all to form a pattern, which is never none the worse

For the patches, and the trimmings, and the pieces strung together,

The manners and the customs, the climate and the weather ;

And man is an enigma, and all the world a riddle,

From these that dance the ball about, to those that play the fiddle."

THE jargon of the various tongues, the costumes of varied colors, the admixture of races, distinctions of rank, contrasts of high and low degrees, and curious combinations of wealth and poverty, which are continually presented and thrown together in the jumble of the bazaars, or in the crowded thoroughfares of Cairo, demanded and created the proper Oriental name of Misch-Misch.

There never was a more motley crowd brought together in so limited a space. Here are asses, camels, horses, dogs, and foot-passengers of every denomination and degree; to wit, water-carriers, barbers, beg

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gars, saints and women; naked children grubbing in the dirt, charm-venders, quack doctors, Arabs of the desert, Turks, soldiers, Franks, Greeks, merchants, adventurers; the Ulemas, venders of sherbet, sugars, and honey; serpent-charmers, with huge boas, or venomous serpents, coiled about their necks and arms, although apparently torpid; rat-catchers, negroes, Nubians, auctioneers, hawkers, fortune-tellers, venders of "smoke," fakirs, lepers, jugglers, mountebanks, Pachas, Beys, Dragomen, and Janissaries,-all passing and repassing in pursuit of their particular business; and many of them proclaiming their profession at the top of their voice.

These human confusions, and the rich bits of azure sky, and views of Oriental architecture, which you open at every turn of the streets, and through every avenue, to the mosques and bazaars, render a life at Cairo one of great artistic interest, and of pleasurable emotions to the traveller. Thus Cairo maintains a purely Oriental character, and displays a beauty of architecture and variety of animated masses, infinitely superior to Constantinople; and hence it is that the life in the East becomes so intensely attractive, from the fact that every one dwells, as it were, with an external world; life is all out of doors, and each one feels in his daily intercourse that all are part and parcel of one common human family.