every description. Alexandria, the traveller will find comparatively a modern town, with but little remaining of the Oriental; no city, so ancient,has so little air of antiquity about it, and with the exception of Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, and a few half buried blocks of Egyptian granite, it looks as modern a town as if it was erected not above fifty years ago. Nevertheless, Alexandria, like a Phœnix,has risen probably a dozen times from the ashes of a preceding city; the very soil seems made up of bricks and mortar; the dust of forgotten ages forms a component part of the atmosphere, and renders a residence there anything but pleasant.
The only desirable port in Syria for an invalid to land at, is Beyrout. There he will find good hotels, and every convenience he could wish for, with an extensive mercantile society of all nations. Beyrout is a large Turkish town, situated on a gently sloping ascent, overlooking the darkly, deeply, beautifully blue waters of the Mediterranean, with Mount Lebanon covered with snow in the back ground. The vegetation of the tropics and of the temperate zone, seem to mingle here on equal terms. Though the palm and the pine are scanty and stunted in growth, the aloe and the cactus grow luxuriantly; and the orange, the lime, the pomegranate,the olive and the vine,
