her face, she looked to him like the avenging shape of the honour he had sold, of the land he had betrayed, of the freedom he had surrendered, of the cause he had forsaken. The rebuke of her regard was not hers, but the rebuke of the peoples, weary and abandoned by the leader who bartered them for gold; the scorn of her gaze was the scorn of the martyrs of liberty, who through all ages perish willingly if with their bodies they can purchase one ray of higher light for the world which knows them not until too late.

By her he saw how vile he had become.

By her he saw how high he might have reached.

She had her vengeance.

The impatient fire of the same demand ran afresh through the revolutionists around him:

"His sentence, Eccellenza!"

He never heard. He had passed through all the bitterness of death; it was her look that killed him.

The cry rose louder:

"His sentence !"

Then at last she answered them:

"Loose him, and let him go."

A sullen furious yell of dissent, that not even their loyalty to her could still, rolled through the vault.

"A traitor dies! A traitor dies!"

By his crime they claimed their justice.

A heavy sigh parted her lips; then the full sweet melody of her voice came on the clamour like music that moves men to tears.

"A traitor-yes! And for that you would deal him death? Nay, think me not gentler than you. I meant to deliver him up to your hands. I bade him be brought to my judgment, that your vengeance might strike him, and lay him dead at my feet. I am no holier than you. There was an hour in which I longed for his life with that thirst you know now; there was an hour in which I would have taken it, and not spared, though his mother had prayed to me. Ah, friends! such hours come to all. But now, the darkness has passed. I see clearer. Death is not ours to deal. And were it ours, should we give him the nameless mystic mercy which all men live to crave-give it as the chastisement of crime? Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion to the atheist, it is immortality to the poet. It is a vast, dim, exhaustless pity to all the world. And would you summon it as your hardest cruelty

to sin ?"

They were silent; she stirred their souls-she had not bound their passions.

"A traitor merits death," they muttered.

may

"Merits it! Not so. The martyr, the liberator, the seeker of truth, deserve its peace; how has the traitor won them? You deem yourselves just; your justice errs. If you would give him justice, make him live. Live to know fear lest every wind among the leaves may whisper of his secret; live to feel the look of a young child's eyes a shame to him ; live to envy every peasant whose bread has not been bought with tainted coin; live to hear ever in his path the stealing step of haunted retribution; live to see his brethren pass by him as a thing accurst; live to

listen in his age to white-haired men, who once had been his comrades, tell to the youth about them the unforgotten story of his shame. Make him live thus if you would have justice."

They answered nothing; a shudder ran through them as they heard. "And if you have as I-a deliverance that forbids you even so much harshness, still let him live, and bury his transgression in your hearts. Say to him as I say;- Your sin was great, go forth and sin no more.'

Then, as the words left her lips, she moved to him from out the light, and stooped, and severed the bonds that bound him, and left him free and none dared touch that which she had made sacred, but stood mute, and afraid, as those who stand in the presence of a soul that is greater than their own.

And the man who had sinned against her fell at her feet.

"Oh, God! If I had known you as I know you now!"

"You never had betrayed me. No!-Live, then, to be true to greater things than I."

While the night was still young, a ship glided southward through the wide white radiance of the moon. The waters stretched, one calm and gleaming sheet of violet light; from the fast-retreating shore a fair wind came, bearing the fragrance of a thousand hills and plains, of golden fruits and flowers of snow, and passion-blossoms of purple, and the scarlet heart of ripe pomegranates; through the silence sounded the cool fresh ripple of the waves as the vessel left her track upon the phosphor-silver, and above, from a million stars, a purer day seemed to dawn on all the aromatic perfumes of the air, and all the dim unmeasured freedom of the And she, who went to freedom, looked, and looked, and looked, as though never could her sight rest long enough upon the limitless radiance, nor her lips drink enough in of the sweet fresh delicious treasure that the waters gave and the winds brought;-the treasure of her liberty.

seas.

"You come to my kingdom !" she said softly, while her dreaming eyes met her lover's.

And he who had cleaved to her with that surpassing love which calumny but strengthens, and fire but purifies, which fear cannot enter and death cannot appal, drew her beauty closer to his breast:

"My kingdom is here!"

And the ship swept on through the stillness of the hushed hours, through the glory of the light, to glide out through the eternal sea-gates of the old Roman world, and pass into the cloudless glow of Eastern skies, where already through the voluptuous night the star of morning

rose.

EGYPT: AND A JOURNEY TO PALESTINE, VIA MOUNT SINAI AND PETRA.*

BY LIEUT.-COLONEL R. H. MILES.

XII.

ON my first visit to Upper Egypt in 1845, I was particularly struck with the very great resemblance which the "profile" delineations of the ancient Egyptians on the walls of the different temples and tombs in that country bore to the countenances, as well as to the figures and forms, of the Sepoys of Upper India. Take the faces, or the contour, and in several instances even the very expression of the countenance, as well as the nature and shape of the garb in which they are clothed (the familiar Hindostanee d'hōtee, or waistcloth, or garment of cotton cloth, folded around their loins); and, lastly, the exact tint, or hue, or colour of the skin of the whole full-length body as portrayed on the stone walls of the places above named; and look well at each of the above points and peculiarities, and, without any great stretch of the imagination, you have the Indian Sepoy of the Upper Provinces of Hindoostan prominently before your gaze. The above features, as handed down to us of the "outward man " of the ancient Egyptian, I likewise particularly noticed on this my last visit to Egypt. That the modern Sepoys are the descendants of the ancient Egyptians I cannot doubt, seeing that I have, first, the evidence of the Holy Scriptures in support of my assumption; and, secondly, the identical worship of the ox; and, thirdly, the system of "caste." The idea is my own-at least I borrow it from no other source-and I note it in this place, before finally quitting the Land of Egypt, for what it is worth. To many persons it may probably appear as "fanciful" as "Pocock's India in Greece."

To commence with the evidence which I shall adduce on the first point, I will refer the reader to the Book of Ezekiel, xxix. 12, wherein the prophet, speaking by the inspiration of the Almighty (as we learn from the preceding verses, 1, 2, 3, and 8), had declared that God would scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and would disperse them through the countries." The same prediction is repeated in chapter xxx., verses 23 and 26. The second evidence is, that it is a well-known fact the ancient Egyptians worshipped the ox (or rather the bull) under the title of the god "Apis;" and at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, a large vault or chamber, called the "sepulchre of the sacred bulls," has within the last few years only been discovered, and the deep mass of superincumbent sand removed away therefrom, through the unwearied exertions and the untiring zeal of Marriette Bey, the French savant and Egyptian antiquary, and the whole laid bare to the inspection of the numerous visitors who annually flock to Egypt, but very few of whom fail to bend their steps towards the modern village of Sakkarra, which stands between the river Nile and the "sand-buried" ruins of ancient Memphis (Hosea, ix. 6). We all know that the Hindoo Sepoys reverence and

* All rights reserved.

worship the bull as well as the cow, and that they would prefer to suffer all the pangs of hunger, and even to die of famine, rather than partake of beef as food to sustain life. It is, moreover, an historical fact, that when the Hindoo portion of the native soldiers who were despatched from India under the command of Sir David Baird reached Kéneh (a small and miserable village situated on the right or eastern bank of the Nile), after having been disembarked at Kosseir (an Egyptian seaport on the western shores of the Red Sea, which stands about halfway between the ruins of the ancient town of Berenice-which was founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and so called in honour of his daughter-and the entrance to the Gulf of Suez), where they were encamped for some little time, and whence they obtained leave to cross the river over to Dendera to visit its ancient temple-found their way into the chapel or shrine of "Isis," which forms a portion thereof, they were greatly as well as agreeably surprised at seeing depicted on the walls thereof a representation of a cow, before which they at once prostrated themselves in worship and in gladdened homage to their deity, and exclaiming one to another, "Dekh-ho to, Bhae-ya! Misree kee mōōlk men, Hindōō Jat bhee chulta, uor Hindōō Thakoor ko pooja kurta,"* and highly delighted at having found a race of beings who had been of the same "caste" as themselves.

Thirdly. The ancient Egyptians were, it would seem by a reference to the Book of Genesis, xliii. 32, the originators of the system of "caste,' which is so perseveringly upheld, even to the present day, by the Hindoo Sepoys, as well as by all Hindōōs.

The camels have all left the ground, and our dromedaries are ready for us to mount and to continue our journey; and now the moment has arrived for the last payment to be made, namely, the settlement by the dragoman with the "purveying" monk belonging to the convent-who has but only just arrived in camp-for the coffee we had drunk on the day of our arrival, as well as for what the monks had sent up for our use to the summit of Mount Sinai the day previous, in the shape of bread, coffee, sugar, and charcoal, together with the expected "fee," or customary bucksheesh, for our having been shown over the inside of the convent. The above figured on the debit side of our own private account with the monks, whilst the dragoman had his separate bill to settle with this monk, for having been furnished with the necessary leaven, firewood, and the use of the convent oven, as well as the labour expended in first making into dough, and then baking several scores of small loaves, from the supply of flour which he (the dragoman) had brought from Cairo for our use on the journey. The sum total came to sixty-seven francs and a half, or 21. 14s. The monk, however, like our young friend Oliver Twist, was by no means satisfied, but " asked for more." These lazy drones, who lead such an idle existence, and who are supported by the holy offerings of the various classes of travellers, tourists, and religious enthusiasts who come to visit this spot, are never contented, and many and frequent are the complaints, published as well as unpublished, of their grasping cupidity. Perceiving that we were losing time whilst this altercation was going on

"Just look, why in Egypt, even, people of the 'Hindōō persuasion' are to be met with, and who offer incense to the Hindōō deity!"

between our dragoman and the monk, I told the former to explain to the latter that we considered we had paid amply for what we had been supplied with from the convent's stores, and that for the matter of visiting the interior of their building, we had already, previous to our departure from Cairo, paid a "fee" of one napoleon for that privilege, and that the two American gentlemen had paid the sum of ten francs, in addition to the above sum, through their own consul at Cairo, for the like permission. In the course of my travels throughout this wide world, I have always found that the Americans, with their excellent system of consulate arrangements, could travel at far less cost and "outlay," for the hire of either dahabiéhs to proceed up the Nile, or for the hire of their camels to convey them and their baggage across the desert, either to Mount Sinai or to Palestine, or in the terms of their engagement with a dragoman, than the unfortunate and "ever-plucked" Britishers could do.

The sum total of our disbursements, therefore, at the convent of Mount Sinai came to in all within a fraction of four pounds sterling. At 11 A.M. we quitted the encamping-ground, delighted at having accomplished our visit to Mount Sinai, and looking anxiously forward for some new object of interest to occupy as well as to divert our minds.

We were all agreed not on any account to sleep inside the convent walls, on account of the mauvaise réputation which the rooms therein enjoyed, in consequence of the vermin which were the "live stock" of the various beds, couches, sofas, and "divans" standing therein, and of whose terrible nightly attacks preceding "tourists" had warned us in their published as well as by their viva voce accounts of their own visit to this spot. The monks have for sale occasionally (for the article is scarce, and the first visitors of the season generally buy it all up, to take away with them to Europe) some of the "manna" of the desert, which they employ the Bédouins to gather for them. One of our party (a "clerico") purchased a small earthenware jarful. It did not look particularly inviting to the eye; for it was either intentionally beat up into a pastylooking substance resembling dirty butter, or the heat had caused it to run into one compact mass. It was the same stuff, however, which we had first met with in the Wady Ghurundul, only not so nice and clean-looking as when shining like so many little pale yellow-coloured buttons, in its pure, fresh, and ungathered state, on the tamarisk-trees and shrubs.

During our journey this day we passed the footprints in several places of the wild goat. Indeed, the day after our arrival at Mount Sinai, a Bédouin shot one of these shy animals and disposed of it to our dragoman, who had it cut up into joints, and served up at our table as a substitute for roast mutton. The flesh was dark in colour, and likewise hard and coarse to the taste. It lasted us until we reached Akăbah. From Sinai to Akǎbah we were six days on the road, and which journey proved a very fatiguing one. The new dromedaries turned out as bad, if not inferior to the former ones, and obliged more than one of our party to have recourse to one of the baggage camels for an easier "mount."

During this first day's march from Sinai we traversed a good portion of the long Wady-es-Shaick, and after the expiration of a little better than an hour's travelling, we passed a whitewashed building, with a sort of low cupola roof, which stood all alone in this extensive