disciples, as well as on the great day of the Prophet. The horse on which he makes his fearful journey from the Hassaneyn to the Esbekeeyeh is used for no other purpose. For seven years at least no less sacred personage has mounted him than Ahmed el Kudari, the chief of the order.

As we waited under a tent in the full noontide heat, crowds of all classes and countries around us, carriages full of beautiful Circassians opposite, banners flying, drums beating, and policemen in blue walking up and down to keep the way clear, we found it hard to realise that we were assisting at a religious ceremony and not at a horseThe few historical and local particulars we could learn helped the truthfulness of our impressions; but, though one or two learned Europeans can give information, it is for the most part extremely difficult to obtain anything better than vague tradition from a native. On the ceremonies of his religion he is studiously reticent. Here on the spot, you may

race.

interrogate him in vain. He is altogether taken up with the enthusiasm of the occasion. To him the Doseh is a miracle, a great proof of the power of Allah, whose name must be exalted, and proves that the faithful are superior to the ordinary laws of nature. In spite of the excitement visible on every brown face, the crowd is perfectly orderly; and, what is more extraordinary, the hundreds of infidels present are never, at least openly, insulted. As the crowd became greater,

the noise more deafening, the sunshine more blinding, a sudden movement far away to the right announced the approach of the procession. The entrance to what you cannot help calling the racecourse is close to the English church. The open space formerly used has been built over, and the present one is surrounded by the new quarter and by European houses. At the Moulid e' Nebi this open space is covered with booths and tents as if for a fair. Every night during the festival the faithful assemble, each under his own religious chief in his own conventicle, and revival meetings are held, lasting far into the night. Foreigners are fond of visiting the show, and a dragoman or a donkey-boy who is a dervish, can generally place them where the religious exercises may be witnessed. Exercises they literally are. No Ranter, or Shaker, or Methodist of the wildest sect, ever set his hearers harder physical tasks. When the great day comes all are excited to the highest pitch, and, if necessary, hasheesh does the rest.

Fighting my way with difficulty to the edge of the living pavement, I saw some two hundred men lying close, side by side, all their bare feet turned one way, all their faces hidden in their folded arms. A man walked along on them, and jammed them closer and closer. Then, one after another, six men, bearing tall standards, trod heavily past. The road was not quite straight, the crowd pressed closer, and we could not see more than a few yards in either direction. By the

feet of the prostrate dervishes their best friends stood chanting a hymn, and fanning them with a regular motion. At length the sheykh appeared. He was preceded by a standard-bearer. The horse was led by two men. His gait was very unsteady, and the sheykh, a large dark man of middle age, appeared to be asleep or fainting in the saddle, and, though he was supported by two men, rocked heavily from side to side. The horse, a fine grey Arab, went very slowly, as if impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. They were past in a moment, but not before I had heard the sound of the horse's hoofs on the men's bodies, a hollow thump which haunted my ears. all the rest of the day.

The Peculiarity of the Collection-M. Mariette's researches-The most Ancient Art in the World-Enumeration of the chief Examples of the Early Period-Conclusions as to Life and Manners under the Ancient Kings-A Discourse of Scarabs.

It is a subject for constant regret that the Egyptian collections in European museums are wanting in the characteristic most likely to make a museum useful

to the student. At Boolak they know whence every piece came. They know where and how it was found. It follows that they can always at least approximate to its chronological position—not perhaps to its actual date, for dates, as we count them, do not apply to the early periods of Egyptian history.

Mariette Bey, the curator of the museum, has gone to work in a very simple and intelligible way as regards this difficulty. He has adopted, merely for experimental purposes, the chronology of the only authority that can in any way be called contemporary, and has provisionally used the narrative of Manetho, which at least gives the student a succession of names and events. I use the word provisionally because his system is like a working theory in astronomy; it squares, so far as his investigations have gone, with the testimony afforded by the ancient documentary evidence of contemporary inscriptions, while the others all require a certain allowance, a margin of doubt, a possibility or probability of error, which, although we may prefer one or another, render them at present less easy to use in the working of problems. The lists of Manetho have been adopted of necessity by most of the theoretical chronologists, but with modifications more or less serious. Some of these modifications may be reasonable, others are wholly untenable, and of most it is enough to say that further information would be necessary to a decided opinion. Meanwhile, for practical purposes, M.