QUANTITY AND QUALITY.

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Persia and at Athens I had an opportunity of studying this superiority of art over heaped up matter, a superiority which permits the Parthenon to be much smaller than the Church of the Madeleine, and the great mosque of Ispahan to fit three times over inside that which the Sultan Abdul Aziz is about to consecrate to the memory of his mother, in one of the most important sites in old Stamboul. Non numerantur sed ponderantur, true artists of all ages have said, to themselves, in a Latin proverb but little practised by the Romans, who were everywhere bitten with a mania for constructing things more fatally coarse and heavy than anything which had preceded them. Petra afforded us a shocking example of this truth. During our excursion in the Valley of Tombs, our little party, though always frivolous, had made no unbecoming remarks, had said none of those things which would depoetize Homer himself, if that were possible. This abstinence was a mark of discernment; an indication of the profound impression which this city of the olden time had made upon us, and of the sincere admiration with which we had contemplated a spectacle which I shall ever hold to be unsurpassed.

Regretfully we turned our backs on this beautiful

dream, in order to return to the city by the way of the tombs of the Mamelouks. These funereal monuments, whose dimensions are much less, form a suburb to the Valley of the Caliphs, without injuring the character of the fantastic landscape. The background of the superb picture is formed by the mountain of Mokattam, against which these tombs stand, placed closely together, and as picturesque in their own fashion as the mosques which we had just seen. They are sheltered by canopies of sculptured stone and wood, in which I perceived a striking analogy with the constructions which I had had an opportunity of seeing at Erzeroum, and in the neighbourhood of Mossoul. Were these monuments, or only their ornamentation, the work of Persian artists? either may be the case. The roof of these mausoleums is decorated with small domes, which are steeper and more angular than the Arab cupola proper, and which approach the very open arch of the Persian ogive, which forms a true triangle, rounded at its extremities. This is a remark purely of form, and of presumed analogy which does not imply any archeological conclusion more authorised to define its origin.

These elegant tombs are tolerably close together,

THE HORSE MARKET.

4I

and they form a little special metropolis in which we read the story of an entire epoch in the modern history of Egypt. Those fierce Mamelouks must have been brilliant personages to have numbered in their suite artists capable of producing all that is most delicate and elegant in Arab art. There is a faint odour of the 'Jockey Club' of ancient times about these funereal buildings. These Mussulman Mousquetaires, doubtless, were connoisseurs of painting and collectors of Japanese curiosities.

We re-entered Cairo by the gate Bab-el-Karaph, and crossed the Karamisdan, a sort of Champ de Mars, commanded by the citadel of Mehemet Ali, and the square of the citadel, called Roumeïleh, or the Horse Market. This is the rendezvous of the caravans, and the site of the military encampments. It is the esplanade of the Invalides, added to the Place de la Concorde, and connected by an endless bazaar.

The lateness of the hour made it impossible for us to study the imposing aspect of these modern' constructions on this day, and at six o'clock we sat down to dine, mute with hunger and admiration. But we were not loiterers; we had not come to Egypt to flâner; we had to work, to paint well and truly.