from the steam-packets to place themselves on the backs of donkeys, in order to get through the streets. This is all changed now, and the traveler finds a large and roomy van ready for his convenience.
The great square of Alexandria, where most of the European inhabitants reside, has a singularly fine and pleasing appearance, though without anything of which the architect can boast. The houses are built of whitish limestone, like Bathstone, only here the walls remain pure as when erected—taking no tarnish from the weather. In the centre is an obelisk of the yellowish-white Cairo marble, which surmounts a fountain. The residences of the consuls around the square are each surmounted by a flag-staff, on which on gala-days the ensigns of their respective nations are displayed. The French consul has a strange-looking corkscrew staircase surrounding his, and leading to a watch-tower which overlooks the town. Many of the sign boards of the shopkeepers, especially of the apothecaries, are painted with Greek characters. Here are situated the principal hotels, and hence diverge streets to all parts of the town.
Alexandria was originally built in the form of a Madonian mantle, with its longer side to the sea. At one time it contained a population of above half a million, of which half were slaves. It boasted of four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews. Its public libraries are said to have contained seven hundred thousand volumes of books. It was accidentally destroyed by fire during the war with the Romans in Cæsar's time. Ages of mis-*rule under Saracens, and latterly under Turks, fell like a blight on everything in Alexandria, as on everything else in Egypt: and not until the era of Mehemet Ali, the present vigorous ruler, did the country show any symptom of revival. Since the beginning of the present century, the population of Alexandria has increased from seven thousand to seventy thousand. With its harbor and docks, it now possesses the appearance of a thriving port.
Vestiges of the ancient splendor of Alexandria are everywhere to be found. Fragments of richly-sculptured columns, of architraves, cornices, and other portions of architectural ornament, are to be seen strewed about in every quarter of the city—broken up for lime or for paving-stones, and built into the meanest houses. Huge shafts of granite are continually disclosed, half buried amongst the rubbish or the sand; and the mounds of ruins are in many cases one mass of porphyries, granites, verde-anticoes, and marbles, brought from Upper Egypt or the south of Europe. In the course of a few hours I picked up some hundred specimens of thirty different varieties of the stones I have named, which required only a little polishing to restore to them their lustre. Mosaics, and pieces of ancient glass, are also abundant; the latter marked by that iridescent semi-metallic hue which indicates decay through extreme lapse of time. The sights of Alexandria are Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the Catacombs, the pasha's palace, and the battle-field where Abercromby fell; the Lake Mareotis, of which a distant view usually satisfies the traveler; and the canal. Pompey's Pillar stands on an eminence about six hundred yards from the present walls of the town, close beside the road which leads from the Rosetta Gate to the Mahmoudyè Canal. The total height of the column is ninety-eight feet. The shaft, which is a sin-
