Chapter III: I. Antonio (4)

Again he said in memorable words, which must not be forgotten in forming a just estimate of his character, "The system of government must be adapted to the spirit of the nation. France required a strong government. France was in the same state as Rome when a dictator was declared necessary for the salvation of the republic. Successions of coalitions against the existence of the Republic, had been formed by English gold among all the most powerful nations of Europe. To resist successfully it was essential that all the energies of the country should be at the disposal of the chief. I never conquered unless in my own defense. Europe never ceased to make war against France and her principles. It was necessary for us to conquer, that we might not be conquered. Between the parties which agitated France I was like a rider seated on an unruly horse, who always wants to swerve either to the right or the left. To lead him to keep a straight course, he is obliged to make him feel the bridle. The government of a country, just emerging from revolution, menaced by foreign enemies and agitated by the intrigues of domestic traitors, must necessarily be energetic. In quieter times my dictatorship would have terminated, and I should have commenced my constitutional reign. Even, as it was, with a coalition always existing against me, either secret or public, there was more equality in France, than in any other country in Europe. One of my grand objects was to render education accessible to every body. I caused every institution to be formed upon a plan which offered instruction to the public either gratis, or at a rate so moderate as not to be beyond the means of the peasant. The museums were thrown open to the whole people. The French populace would have become the best educated in the world. All my efforts were directed to illuminate the mass of the nation, instead of brutifying them by ignorance and superstition. The English people, who are lovers of liberty, will one day lament, with tears, having gained the battle of Waterloo. It was as fatal to the liberties of Europe as that of Philippi was to those of Rome. It has precipitated Europe into the hands of despots, banded together for the oppression of mankind."

Though Napoleon felt deeply the sanctity of law, and the necessity of securing the inflexible enforcement of its penalties, he was never more highly gratified than when he was enabled, by the exercise of the pardoning power, to rescue the condemned. Says Bourrienne, whose testimony will not be questioned, "When the imperious necessities of his political situation, to which, in fact, he sacrificed every thing, did not interpose, the saving of life afforded him the highest satisfaction. He would even have thanked those, to whom he rendered such a service, for the gratification they had thus afforded him." A French emigrant, M. Defeu, had been taken, with arms in his hands, fighting against France. The crime was treason; the penalty death. He was connected with some of the most honorable families in France. A very earnest petition was presented to Napoleon for his pardon. "There is no room for mercy here," Napoleon sternly replied. "A man who fights against his country is a child who would kill his mother." The affecting condition of his family was urged, and the beneficial effects upon the community of such an act of clemency. Napoleon paused for a moment, and then said, "Write, 'The First Consul orders the judgment on M. Defeu to be suspended.'" The laconic reprieve was instantly written, signed by Napoleon, and dispatched to Sens, where the unfortunate man was imprisoned. The next morning, the moment Bourrienne entered the First Consul's apartment, Napoleon said to him, "I do not like to do my work by halves. Write to Sens, 'The First Consul desires that M. Defeu be immediately liberated.' He may repay the deed with ingratitude. But we can not help that--so much the worse for him. In all such cases, Bourrienne, never hesitate to speak to me. When I refuse it will only be because I can not do otherwise."

In Napoleon's disposition firmness and gentleness were singularly and beautifully blended. The following anecdote illustrates the inflexibility of his sense of justice. A wealthy nobleman, thirty years of age, had married a young girl of sixteen. It was a mercenary marriage. The friends of the young lady, without any regard to her feelings, dragged her to the altar. She cherished no affection for her husband. He became jealous of her, and, without the slightest proof of her criminality, murdered her. He was arrested, tried, and condemned to death. Connected by birth with the first families in France, and rallying around him the interest of the most influential of friends, great exertions were made to obtain from the First Consul a pardon. To the petitioners, pleading in his behalf, Napoleon replied:

"Why should I pardon this man? He availed himself of his fortune for the vile purpose of bribing the affections of a girl. He did not succeed in winning them, and he became jealous. His jealousy was not the result of love but of vanity. He has committed the crime of murder. What urged him to it? Not his honor, for his wife had not injured it. No! he was instigated by brutality, vanity, and self-love. He has no claim to mercy. The rich are too prone to consider themselves elevated above the reach of the law. They imagine that wealth is a sacred shield to them. This man has committed a crime for which there are no extenuating circumstances. He must suffer the punishment to which he is justly doomed. If I were to pardon him, that act of misplaced indulgence would put in jeopardy the life of every married woman. As the law positively protects the outraged husband, so it must protect the wife against the consequences of dislike, interest, caprice, or a new passion, which may impel a husband to obtain a divorce, by a more prompt and less expensive course than a legal process."

Josephine whose tender feelings at times controlled her judgment was urgent in her intercession. Many of the relatives of the wretched man were among her most intimate friends. "This," said she, "is the first favor I have asked since your attainment of the supreme power. Surely you will not deny me?"

"I can not," said Napoleon, "grant your request. And when it is known, Josephine, that even your persuasions could not induce me to commit an act of injustice, no one else will henceforth dare to petition me for such a purpose."

England, Austria, and Russia, together with many other of the minor powers of monarchical Europe, were now combined against France. The Emperor Paul of Russia had furnished a large army to co-operate with the allies in their assault upon the Republic. Ten thousand of the Russians had been taken prisoners. But in the recent disasters which had overwhelmed the arms of France, many thousand French prisoners were in the hands of the allies. Napoleon proposed an exchange. The Austrian government refused, because it selfishly wished to exchange for Austrians only. The English government also refused, assigning the reason that it was contrary to their principles to exchange for prisoners taken from other nations. "What," exclaimed Napoleon to the Court of St. James, "do you refuse to liberate the Russians, who were your allies, who were fighting in your ranks, and under your own commander, the Duke of York?" With Vienna he also expostulated, in tones of generous warmth, "Do you refuse to restore to their country those men to whom you are indebted for your victories and conquests in Italy, and who have left in your hands a multitude of French prisoners, whom they have taken? Such injustice excites my indignation." Then yielding to those impulses, so characteristic of his generous nature, he exclaimed, "I will restore them to the Czar without exchange. He shall see how I esteem brave men." Whatever Napoleon undertook he performed magnificently. The Russian officers immediately received their swords. The captive troops, ten thousand in number, were assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. They were all furnished with a complete suit of new clothing in the uniform of their own regiments, and thoroughly armed with weapons of the very best of French manufacture. The officers were authorized to organize them into battalions and regiments. And thus triumphantly these battalions of armed men were returned into the bosom of the ranks of the multitudinous hosts, rushing down upon France. It is gratifying to record that magnanimity so extraordinary passed not away unappreciated.

The Emperor Paul was so disgusted with the selfishness of Austria and England, and was so struck with admiration in view of this unparalleled generosity of Napoleon, that he immediately abandoned the alliance. He attached himself to Napoleon with that enthusiasm of constitutional ardor which characterized the eccentric monarch. In a letter to the First Consul, written with his own hand, he said, "Citizen First Consul!--I do not write to you to discuss the rights of men or citizens. Every country governs itself as it pleases. Wherever I see at the head of a nation a man who knows how to rule and how to fight, my heart is attracted toward him. I write to acquaint you with my dissatisfaction with England, who violates every article of the law of nations, and has no guide but her egotism and her interest. I wish to unite with you to put an end to the unjust proceedings of that government."

Russia was thus detached from the alliance, and sending a minister to Paris, recognized the new government. Napoleon now sent an embassador to Prussia to establish, if possible, friendly relations with that power. Duroc, the only one whom Napoleon ever admitted to his ultimate friendship, was selected for this mission, in consequence of his graceful address, his polished education, and his varied accomplishments.--Frederick William was a great admirer of military genius. Duroc, who had been in the campaigns of Italy and of Egypt, could interest him with the recital of many heroic enterprises. The first interview of Duroc with the Prussian monarch was entirely private, and lasted two hours. The next day Duroc was invited to dine with the king, and the Prussian court immediately recognized the consular government.

Notwithstanding Napoleon's vast exaltation, he preserved personally the same simple tastes and habits, the same untiring devotion to the details of business, and the same friendships as when he was merely a general of the Republic. He rose at seven o'clock, dressed with scrupulous neatness, during which time the morning journals were read to him. He then entered his cabinet, where he read letters, and wrote or dictated answers until ten. He then breakfasted with Josephine and Hortense, usually some of his aids and one or two literary or scientific friends being invited. At the close of this frugal meal, he attended the meetings of the Council, or paid visits of ceremony or business to some of the public offices. At five o'clock he returned to dinner, on ordinary occasions not allowing himself more than fifteen minutes at the table. He then retired to the apartments of Josephine, where he received the visits of ministers, and of the most distinguished persons of the metropolis.

In the organization of his court Napoleon was unalterably determined to suppress that licentiousness of manners, which for ages had disgraced the palaces of the French monarchs, and which, since the overthrow of Christianity, had swept like a flood of pollution over all France. He was very severe upon those females, often of the highest rank, who endeavored to attract attention by freedom of dress or behavior. It was expected that men and their wives should appear in society together--a thing hitherto unprecedented, and contrary to all ideas of fashionable life. The court had hitherto taken the lead in profligacy, and the nation had followed. Napoleon thought that by enforcing purity of morals in the palace, he could draw back the nation to more decorum of manners. "Immorality," said he, "is, beyond a doubt, the worst of all faults in a sovereign; because he introduces it as a fashion among his subjects, by whom it is practiced for the sake of pleasing him. It strengthens every vice, blights every virtue, and infects all society like a pestilence. In short, it is a nation's scourge."

On one occasion a courtier, very high in rank and office, one of the imperial chamberlains, requested permission to present his daughter-in-law at court. She was extremely beautiful, and though distinguished by a captivating air of simplicity, was one of the most artful of the daughters of Eve. She joined the imperial parties on all occasions, and wherever she went threw herself in the way of Napoleon. Her soft and languishing eyes were riveted upon him. She sighed, blushed, and affected bashfulness, while, at the same time, she constantly placed herself in situations to attract his notice. Sometimes she would stand, for a long time, apparently lost in reverie, gazing and sighing before the portraits of Napoleon. Her father-in-law affected displeasure at her conduct, and complained of the unfortunate but resistless passion which she had imbibed. Her husband, who was infamously in the intrigue, regarded the matter with the most philosophic indifference. The mother-in-law also made herself busy to help the matter along, saying that, after all, it was hard to blame her for loving Napoleon. For some time Napoleon paid no attention to the intrigue, and appeared not to notice it. At length the affair became a subject of court gossip, and it was necessary that it should be noticed.

One evening, at the close of a sitting of the Council of State, at which Napoleon had presided, conducting Cambaceres into the recess of one of the windows, he said, "Madame B---- is rendering herself quite intolerable to me. The conduct of her relations is still more odious. The father-in-law is an infamous man, her husband a mean-spirited wretch, and her mother a vile intriguing woman, by whose arts, however, I am not to be duped. The abandoned female, who unreservedly puts up her virtue to sale, is preferable to the hypocrite who, for motives equally mercenary, affects a sentimental attachment. I wish you to call on my chamberlain, and inform him that I dispense with his services for the space of a year. Inform his wife that I forbid her appearance at court for six years. And make known to the affectionate married couple, that, to afford them an opportunity of duly appreciating each other's excellent qualities, I give them leave to spend six months in Naples, six months in Vienna, and six months in any other part of Germany."

On another occasion a lieutenant-colonel sent a petition to Napoleon, soliciting promotion. In accordance with the corruptions of those paganized times, he added, "I have two _beautiful daughters_, who will be too happy to throw themselves at the feet of the good Emperor, and thank him for the benefit conferred on their father." Napoleon was indignant at this atrocious proposal. He said, "I know not what withholds me from having this infamous letter inserted in the order of the day of the writer's regiment." Napoleon made inquiries respecting this officer, and found that he had been one of the assassins during the reign of terror, and an intimate friend of Robespierre. He immediately dismissed him from service. He found that the daughters were amiable and interesting young ladies, totally unconscious of the infamous project entertained by their father. That they might not suffer the penalty of their father's baseness, he settled a small pension on each of them, on condition of their leaving Paris, and retiring to their native city.

Napoleon effectually enthroned himself in the hearts of the common people of France. They believed him to be their friend and advocate. They still cherish the same belief. At this hour there is no ruler, enthroned or entombed, who is regarded with the enthusiastic veneration with which the people of France now cherish the memory of their emperor. Napoleon stands alone in that glory. He has no rival.

THE BEDOUEEN, MOHAMMAD ALEE, AND THE BAZAARS.[5]

[Footnote 5: From "The Howadji in Syria," by GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS,
Author of "Nile Notes." Just published by Harper and Brothers.]

AMONG THE BEDOUEEN.

The pleasant tales of Sultans' pilgrimages are only the mirage of memory.

The poor and pious Muslim, which is not the title of Caliphs, when he undertakes a long desert journey, does not carry nine hundred camels for his wardrobe, but he carries his grave-linen with him. Stricken by fatigue, or privation, or disease, when his companions can not tarry for his recovery or death, he performs the ablution with sand, and digging a trench in the ground, wraps himself in his grave-clothes, and covering his body with sand, lies alone in the desert to die, trusting that the wind will complete his burial.

In the Arabs around you, you will mark a kindred sobriety. Their eyes are luminous and lambent, but it is a melancholy light. They do not laugh. They move with easy dignity, and their habitual expression is musing and introverted, as that of men whose minds are stored with the solemn imagery of the desert.

You will understand that your own party of Arabs is not of the genuine desert breed. They are dwellers in cities, not dwellers in tents. They are mongrel, like the population of a sea-port. They pass from Palestine to Egypt with caravans of produce, like coast-traders, and are not pure Bedoueen. But they do not dishonor their ancestry. When a true Bedoueen passes upon his solitary camel, and with a low-spoken salaam, looks abstractedly and incuriously upon the procession of great American Moguls, it is easy to see that his expression is the same as that of the men around you, but intensified by the desert.

Burckhardt says that all Orientals, and especially the Arabs, are little sensible of the beauty of nature. But the Bedoueen is mild and peaceable. He seems to you a dreamy savage. There is a softness and languor, almost an effeminacy of impression, the seal of the sun's child. He does not eat flesh--or rarely. He loves the white camel with a passion. He fights for defense, or for necessity; and the children of the Shereefs, or descendants of the Prophet, are sent into the desert to be made heroes. They remain there eight or ten years, rarely visiting their families.

The simple landscape of the desert is the symbol of the Bedoueen's character; and he has little knowledge of more than his eye beholds. In some of the interior provinces of China, there is no name for the ocean, and when in the time of Shekh Daheir, a party of Bedoueen came to Acre upon the sea, they asked what was that desert of water.

A Bedoueen after a foray upon a caravan, discovered among his booty several bags of fine pearls. He thought them dourra, a kind of grain. But as they did not soften in boiling, he was about throwing them disdainfully away, when a Gaza trader offered him a red tarboosh in exchange, which he delightedly accepted.

Without love of natural scenery, he listens forever to the fascinating romances of the poets, for beautiful expressions naturally clothe the simple and beautiful images he every where beholds. The palms, the fountains, the gazelles, the stars, and sun, and moon, the horse, and camel--these are the large illustration and suggestion of his poetry.

Sitting around the evening fire and watching its flickering with moveless melancholy, his heart thrills at the prowess of El-Gundubah, although he shall never be a hero, and he rejoices when Kattalet-esh-Shugan says to Gundubah, "Come let us marry forthwith," although he shall never behold her beauty, nor tread the stately palaces.

He loves the moon which shows him the way over the desert that the sun would not let him take by day, and the moon looking into his eyes, sees her own melancholy there. In the pauses of the story by the fire, while the sympathetic spirits of the desert sigh in the rustling wind, he says to his fellow, "Also in all true poems there should be palm-trees and running water."

For him in the lonely desert the best genius of Arabia has carefully recorded upon parchment its romantic visions, for him Haroun El Rashid lived his romantic life, for him the angel spoke to Mohammad in the cave, and God received the Prophet into the seventh heaven.

Some early morning a cry rings through the group of black square tents. He springs from his dreams of green gardens and flowing waters, and stands sternly against the hostile tribe which has surprised his own. The remorseless morning secretes in desert silence the clash of swords, the ring of musketry, the battle-cry. At sunset the black square tents are gone, the desolation of silence fills the air that was musical with the recited loves of Zul-Himmeh, and the light sand drifts in the evening wind over the corpse of a Bedoueen.

--So the grim Genius of the desert touches every stop of romance and of life in you as you traverse his realm and meditate his children. Yet warm and fascinating as is his breath, it does not warp your loyalty to your native West, and to the time in which you were born. Springing from your hard bed upon the desert, and with wild morning enthusiasm pushing aside the door of your tent, and stepping out to stand among the stars, you hail the desert and hate the city, and glancing toward the tent of the Armenian Khadra, you shout aloud to astonished MacWhirter,

"I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race."

But as the day draws forward, and you see the same forms and the same life that Abraham saw, and know that Joseph leading Mary into Egypt might pass you to-day, nor be aware of more than a single sunset since he passed before, then you feel that this germ, changeless at home, is only developed elsewhere--that the boundless desert freedom is only a resultless romance.

The sun sets and the camp is pitched. The shadows are grateful to your eye, as the dry air to your lungs. But as you sit quietly in the tent-door, watching the Armenian camp and the camels, your cheeks pales suddenly as you remember Abraham, and that "he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day." Saving yourself, what of the scene is changed since then? The desert, the camels, the tents, the turbaned Arabs, they were what Abraham saw when "he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo! three men stood by him."

You are contemporary with the eldest history. Your companions are the dusky figures of vaguest tradition. The "long result of Time," is not for you. In that moment you have lost your birthright. You are Ishmael's brother. You have your morning's wish. A child of the desert, not for you are Art, and Poetry, and Science, and the glowing roll of History shrivels away.

The dream passes as the day dies, and to the same stars which heard your morning shout of desert praise, you whisper as you close the tent-door at evening,

"Better fifty years of Europe, than a cycle of Cathay."

MOHAMMAD ALEE.

I do not wonder that Mohammad Alee burned to be master of Syria, and struck so bravely for it.

His career was necessarily but a brilliant bubble, and his success purely personal. That career was passed before the West fairly understood it. It was easier for the Jews to believe good from Nazareth than for us to credit genius in Egypt, and we should as soon have dreamed of old mummied Cheops throned upon the great pyramid and ruling the Pharaohs' realm anew, as of a modern king there, of kingliness unsurpassed in the century, except by Napoleon, working at every disadvantage, yet achieving incredible results.

He was the son of a fisherman--made his way by military skill--recognized the inherent instability of the Mameluke government then absolute in Egypt, and which was only a witless tyranny, sure to fall before ambitious sense and skill. He propitiated the Sublime Porte, whose Viceroy in Egypt was only a puppet of state, practically imprisoned by the Mamelukes in the citadel--and he gained brilliant victories in the Hedjaz, over the Wahabys, infidel and schismatic Muslim.

In 1811, he accomplished the famous massacre of the Mamelukes in the court of the citadel, of which Horace Vernet has painted so characteristic a picture, and for which Mohammad Alee has been much execrated.

But in Turkish politics, humanity is only a question of degree. With Mohammad Alee and the Mamelukes it was diamond cut diamond. They were a congregation of pestilent vapors, a nest of hoary-headed tyrants, whom it was a satisfaction to Humanity and Decency to smoke out and suffocate in any way. Mohammad Alee had doubtless little enough rose-water in his policy to satisfy the grimmest Carlyle. The leader of sanguinary Albanians and imbruted Egyptians against wild Arab hordes is not likely to be of a delicate stomach.

But he was clear-eyed and large-minded. He had the genius of a statesman rather than the shrewdness of a general, although as a soldier he was singularly brave and successful. Of all his acts the massacre of the Mamelukes was perhaps the least bloody, because, by crushing the few heads he had won the victory. A sudden and well-advised bloodshed is often sure to issue in a peace which saves greater misery. It was Cromwell's rule and it was Napoleon's--it was also Mohammad Alee's, and the results usually proved its wisdom.

Moreover, in the matter of this massacre, the balance of sympathy is restored by the fact that only a short time previous to the Mamelukes' Banquet of Death in the citadel, they had arranged Mohammad Alee's assassination upon his leaving Suez. By superior cunning he ascertained the details of this pleasant plan, and publicly ordered his departure for the following morning, but privately departed upon a swift-trotting dromedary in the evening. There was great consequent frustration of plan and confusion of soul among the Mamelukes, who had thought, in this ingenious manner, to cut the knot of difficulty, and they were only too glad to hurry with smooth faces to the Pacha's festival--too much in a hurry, indeed, to reflect upon his superior cunning and to be afraid of it. They lost the game. They were the diamond cut, and evidently deserve no melodious tear.

Mohammad Alee thus sat as securely in his seat as a Turkish Pacha can ever hope to sit. He assisted the Porte in the Greek troubles, perpetrating other massacres there; and afterward, when Abdallah, Pacha of Acre, rebelled against "the Shadow," Mohammad Alee was sent to subdue him. He did so, and then interceded with the Porte for Abdallah's safety.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Alee had ascertained his force, and was already sure of the genius to direct it. He had turned the streams of French and English skill into the agriculture, manufactures, and military discipline of Egypt. His great aim for years had been to make Egypt independent--to revive the ancient richness of the Nile valley, and to take a place for Egypt among the markets of the world. He accomplished this so far, that, restoring to the plain of Thebes the indigo which was once famous there, he poured into the European market so much and so good indigo that the market was sensibly affected. His internal policy was wrong, but we can not here consider it.

Watching and waiting, in the midst of this internal prosperity and foreign success and amazement, while Egyptian youth were thronging to the Parisian Universities, and the Parisian youth looked to Egypt as the career of fame and fortune--as the young Spaniards of a certain period looked to the diamond-dusted Americas--in the midst of all the web Mohammad Alee sat nursing his ambition and biding his time.

Across the intervening desert, Syria wooed him to take her for his slave. Who was there to make him afraid? Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, she fascinated him with love. He should taste boundless sway. Eastward lay Bagdad and Persia, thrones of Caliphs who once sat in his seat--why should not he sit in theirs? Then with softer whispers she pointed to the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, and looked what she dared not speak.

I do not wonder that he was enchanted. I do not wonder that he burned to be master of the superb slave that lay so lovely and fair in the sun, dreaming, as now we see her dream, under the vines and olives. His peer, Napoleon Bonaparte, against whom, in Egypt, his maiden sword was fleshed, whom he loved to name and to hear that they were born in the same year, had thus seen from Elba the gorgeous Fata-Morgana of European empire. How could Mohammad Alee reflect that sallying forth to grasp it, that peer had bitten the dust? That fate deterred the Pacha, as the experience of others always deters ourselves--as a blade of grass stays the wind. Shall not you and I, my reader, swim to our Heros, though a thousand Leanders never came to shore?

It was this Syria through which we plod, this brilliant morning, that seduced Mohammad Alee.

A land of glorious resources and without a population. Here grow wheat, rye, barley, beans and the cotton plant. Oats are rare; but Palestine produces sesame and dourra, a kind of pulse like lentils. Baalbec grows maize. Sugar and rice are not unknown at Beyrout. Lebanon is wreathed with vines. Indigo flourishes without cultivation on the banks of the Jordan. The Druses cultivate the white mulberry. Gaza has dates like those of Mecca, and pomegranates as fine as those of Algiers. Figs and bananas make the gardens of Antioch tropical. From Aleppo come pistachio-nuts. The almond, the olive and the orange thrive in the kindly air; and Damascus revels in twenty kinds of apricot, with all the best fruits of France.

Many of the inhabitants pass us, and we can see what they are. They are repulsive in appearance, the dregs of refuse races. They look mean and treacherous, and would offer small resistance to determination and skill. Mohammad Alee had little fear of the Syrians.

He could not resist the song of the Siren; and suddenly "the Eastern Question" agitated political Europe, and the diplomatic genius of the three greatest states--England, France and Russia--was abruptly challenged by the alarming aspect of the Syrian war, which threatened, with a leader despising the political stagnation and military imbecility of the vast realm of "the Shadow of God on Earth," to issue in a new empire.

Mohammad Alee having subdued Abdallah, Pacha of Acre, and saved his life and throne by intercession with the Porte, was surprised that Abdallah harbored all fugitives from Egypt. He observed that, following his own example, Abdallah was introducing the European discipline into his army, and was enticing into his service many young officers who had been Europeanly instructed at his own expense. He expostulated with Abdallah, and appealed to the Porte. The Sublime Porte, like other political Sublimities, hesitated, meditated--

"Then idly twirled his golden chain,
And smiling, put the question by."

Mohammad Alee, with expectant eyes fixed upon Syria, sat silent, his hand trembling with eagerness and ready to grasp the splendid prize. "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces" of a new oriental empire rose, possible in the light of hope.

His army was carefully disciplined. The fame of its tried officers had been won upon the battle-fields of the Empire. He had a fleet and all the resources of the latest military and marine science. Over all, he had his son Ibrahim, already proved in Arabia and Greece, of a military genius peculiarly Oriental, swift and stern, rude in thought, but irresistible in action--the slave of his father's ambition, the iron right-hand of his will. Internal prosperity and external prestige sealed Mohammad Alee's hope and determination.

Against him was arrayed the worldly magnificence of the Ottoman Porte. But the bannered Muslim lance that had thundered at the gates of Constantinople, and entering, had planted itself upon the earliest Christian church, and flapped barbaric defiance at civilization, was rusty and worm-eaten. Its crimson drapery fluttering, rent, upon an idle wind, would be inevitably shivered by the first rough blow of modern steel.

And the great Powers?--

Their action was, of course, doubtful. There was a chance of opposition, a probability of interference. But the grandeur of the stroke was its safety. From the universal chaos what new combinations might not be educed!

No sooner, therefore, had the Porte "put the question by," than Mohammad Alee proceeded to answer it. The Egyptian army, headed by Ibrahim Pacha, advanced into Syria, and sat down before Acre. Cherishing the old grudge against Abdallah, the Porte, now that a decided part had been taken, smiled faintly in approval. But the conduct of the war betrayed resources of ability and means which kindled terrible suspicions. The firman came from Stamboul, commanding the Pacha of Egypt to withdraw into his own province. He declined, and was declared a rebel.

The bridge thus fell behind him, and only victory or death lay before.

For six months Ibrahim Pacha lay before Acre, and on the 27th May, 1832, he entered by bloody assault the city which Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus had conquered before him, and from which Napoleon Bonaparte had retired foiled. The Syrian war began.

The victorious army advanced, triumphing. The Syrian cities fell before it. The stream of conquest swept northward, overflowing Damascus as it passed. The war was no longer a quarrel of two Pachas, it was a question of life or death for the Turkish Empire. Vainly the Sultan's choicest generals struggled to stem the torrent. The proud walls along the Golden Horn trembled, lest their pride should be for the third time humbled, and this time, as the last, from the Asian shore.

Northern and Western Europe stared amazed at the wonderful spectacle, listening across the hushed Mediterranean to the clang of arms resounding in the effete East, as the appalled Romans heard the gusty roar of the battle of the Huns high over them, and invisible in the air.

Surely it was only the interference of the three Powers that saved the Sultan's throne. That alone deprived us of the pageant of another oriental military romance, so rapid in inception, so entire in execution, that we should have better comprehended those sudden, barbaric descents of the middle ages, which changed in a moment the political aspect of the invaded land:--in a moment, because the mighty appearance of life and power was but a mummy, which a blow would pulverize.

One man, however strong and skillful, could not withstand the force of Europe, and Mohammad Alee retired, baffled, before the leaders of the political Trinity that a few years before had dethroned Napoleon.

The crisis of his life was passed, and unfavorably for his hopes and aims. At the age of sixty-five he relinquished the struggle with Fate, and still one of the great men of a century, rich in great men, with no hope before him, and none behind--for since kingly genius is not hereditary, your divine right is a disastrous fiction--he sank slowly away into dotage.

Before the end, however, both he and his son Ibrahim showed themselves to the Europeans who had watched with such astonished interest the culmination and decay of their power. Ibrahim Pacha, with his fangs removed, shook his harmless rattle, for the last time in the world's hearing, at a dinner given him by young Englishmen, at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, and the wreck of Mohammad Alee, driveling and dozing, took a hand at whist with young Americans in a hotel at Naples.

Father and son returned to Egypt and died there. A vast mosque of alabaster, commenced by Mohammad Alee, and now finished, crowns Cairo, "the delight of the imagination." He wished to be 'buried there; but he lies without the city walls, in that suburb of tombs, upon the cracked sides of one of which a Persian poet has written--"Each crevice of this ancient edifice is a half-opened mouth, that laughs at the fleeting pomp of royal abodes."

All the winds that blow upon Cairo, laugh that mocking laughter, and in any thoughtful mood, as you listen to them and look over the city, you will mark the two alabaster minarets of Mohammad Alee's mosque, shafts of snow in the rich blue air, if you will, but yet pointing upward.

Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, the superb slave he burned to possess, still dreams in the sun. We look from the tent door and see her sleeping, and the remembrance of this last, momentary interest which disturbed the slumber, reminds us that it will one day be broken. So fair is the prize, that, knowing all others desire her as ardently, no single hand feels strong enough to grasp it, and the conflict of many ambitions secures her peace.

Yet it is clear that nerve and skill could do what they have done, and so spare is the population, so imbecile the government, and so rich the soil, that a few thousand determined men could march unresisted through Syria, and possess the fair and fertile land.

BAZAARS.

Christians and Saracens agree in reprobating the black hat. But the Damascenes declare open war against it. In 1432, Bertrandon de la Brocquière entered the city with a "broad beaver hat," which was incontinently knocked off his head. Naturally his first movement was "to lift my fist," but wisdom held his hand, and he desisted, content to revenge himself by the questionable inference that it was "a wicked race."

But if it be "wicked" to malign the black hat, who shall be justified?

This was only a gentle illustration of the bitter hatred of Christians and all infidels, cherished by the Damascenes, who are the most orthodox of Muslim. Indeed, it is only within twenty years that an accredited English representative could reside in Damascus, and he maintains an imposing state. At present, some hundred European tourists visit the city yearly, and the devout faithful find reasons for toleration in infidel gold, which they never found in argument.

Here, too, as every where in Syria, Ibrahim Pacha has been our ally. He permitted infidels to ride horses through the streets. "O, Allah!" exclaimed the religious Damascenes, who are termed by the Turks _Shami-Shoumi_, cursed rascals. "Your Highness suffers Christians to sit as high as the faithful."

"No, my friends," responded Ibrahim, "you shall ride dromedaries, which will put you much above them."

We went into the bazaars to encounter these enemies of the black hat, and _ex-officio_ riders of dromedaries. We had a glimpse of their beauty as we entered the city. But Eastern life is delightful in detail. It is a mosaic to be closely studied.

You enter, and the murmurous silence blends pleasantly with the luminous dimness of the place. The matting overhead, torn and hanging in strips along which, gilding them in passing, the sun slides into the interior, is a heavy tapestry. The scene is a perpetual fair, not precisely like Greenwich Fair, or that of the American Institute, but such as you frequent in Arabian stories.

Bedoueen glide spectrally along, with wild, roving eyes, like startled deer. Insane Dervishes and Santons meditate the propriety of braining the infidel Howadji. Shekhs from distant Asia, pompous Effendi from Constantinople, Bagdad traders, cunning-eyed Armenian merchants meet and mingle, and many of our old friends, the grizzly-bearded, red-eyed fire-worshipers, somnolently curled among their goods, eye us, through the smoke they emit, as perfect specimens of the proper sacrifice they owe their Deity. All strange forms jostle and crowd in passing, except those which are familiar; and children more beautiful than any in the East, play in the living mazes of the crowd.

Shopping goes actively on. The merchant without uncrossing his legs, exhibits his silks and coarse cottons to the long draped and vailed figures that group picturesquely about his niche. Your eye seizes the bright effect of all the gay goods as you saunter on. Here a merchant lays by his chibouque and drinks, from a carved glass, sweet liquorice water, cooled with snow from Lebanon. Here one closes his niche and shuffles off to the mosque, followed by his boy-slave with the chibouque. Here another rises, and bows, and falls, kissing the floor, and muttering the noon prayer. Every where there is intense but languid life.

The bazaars are separated into kinds. That of the jewelers is inclosed, and you see the Jews, swarthy and keen-eyed servants of Mammon, busily at work. Precious stones miserably set, and handfuls of pearls, opals, and turquoises are quietly presented to your inspection. There is no eagerness of traffic. A boy tranquilly hands you a ring, and another, when you have looked at the first. You say "_la_," no, and he retires.

Or you pause over a clumsy silver ring, with an Arabic inscription upon the flint set in it. Golden Sleeve ascertains that it is the cipher of Hafiz. You reflect that it is silver, which is the orthodox metal, the Prophet having forbidden gold. You place it upon your finger, with the stone upon the inside, for so the Prophet wore his upon the fore-finger, that he might avoid ostentation. It is a quaint, characteristic, oriental signet-ring. Hafiz is a common name, it is probably that of the jeweler who owns the ring. But you have other associations with the name, and as you remember the Persian poet, you suffer it to remain upon your finger, and pay the jeweler a few piastres. You do not dream that it is enchanted. You do not know that you have bought Ala-ed-deen's lamp, and as a rub of that evoked omnipotent spirits, so a glance at your ring, when Damascus has become a dream, will restore you again to the dim bazaar, and the soft eyes of the children that watch you curiously as you hesitate, and to the sweet inspiration of Syria.

You pass on into the quarter where the pattens are made, inlaid with pearl, such as you remarked upon the feet of the kohl-eyebrowed houris. Into the shoemakers, where the brilliant leathers justify better poetry than Hans Sach's interminable rhymes, though here is only their music, not their moral. You climb crumbling steps, and emerge from darkness upon the top of the bazaar, on a ledge of a Roman ruin, and look down into the sunny greenness of the great mosque, which you can not more nearly approach. Then down, and by all the beautiful fabrics of the land, hung with the tin-foiled letters that surround pieces of English prints, and which the color-loving eye of the Oriental seizes as an ornament for his own wares, you pass into the region of drugs and apothecaries, and feel that you are about visiting that Persian Doctor in Mecca who dealt in nothing but miraculous balsams and infallible elixirs, whose potions were all sweet and agreeable, and the musk and aloe wood which he burned, diffused a delicious odor through the shop. Surely he was court-physician to Zobeide.

Golden Sleeve pauses before an old figure curled among the bottles and lost in reverie, saturated, it seems, with opium, and dreaming its dreams. This is Zobeide's doctor. He had evidently the elixir of life among those sweet potions, and has deeply drunk. Life he has preserved; but little else that is human remains, except the love that is stronger than life. For as he opens his vague eyes and beholds us, they kindle with an inward fire, as if they looked upon the Philosopher's Stone. That stone is in our purses; the old magician knows it, and he knows the charm to educe it. He opens a jar, and a dreamy odor penetrates our brains. It is distilled of flowers culled from the gardens of the Ganges: or is this delicate perfume preferable--this zatta, loved of poets and houris, which came to the doctor's grandfather from Bagdad?

Attar of roses did Golden Sleeve suggest? Here is the essence of that divinest distillation of the very heart of summer. But, O opulent Howadji! no thin, pale, Constantinople perfume is this, but the viscous richness of Indian roses. As many wide acres of bloom went to this jar as to any lyric of Hafiz. It lies as molten gold in the quaint glass vase. The magician holds it toward the Syrian sun, and the shadow of a smile darkens over his withered features. Then, drop by drop, as if he poured the last honey that should ever be hived from Hymettus, he suffers it to exude into the little vials. They are closely stopped, and sealed, and wrapped in cotton. And some wintry Christmas in the West the Howadji shall offer to a fairer than Zobeide those more than drops of diamond.

Nor this alone--but the cunning of Arabian art has sucked the secret of their sweetness from tea and coffee, from all the wild herbs of Syria, and from amber. In those small jars is stored the rich result of endless series of that summer luxuriance you saw in the vale of Zabulon. Sandal-wood to burn upon your nargileh, mystic bits to lay upon your tongue, so that the startled Bedoueen, as you pass into the bazaar, and breathe upon him in passing, dreams that you came from Paradise, and have been kissed by houris.

Was it not the magic to draw from your purse the Philosopher's Stone? The court-physician of Zobeide, relapsing into reverie, smiles vaguely as he says salaam; as if the advantage were his--as if you were not bearing away with you in those odors the triumphs of the rarest alchemy.

Breathing fragrance, you enter a khan opening upon the bazaar, that of Assad Pacha, a stately and beautiful building, consisting of a lofty domed court, the dome supported by piers, with a gallery running quite around it. Private rooms for the choicest goods open out of the gallery. The court is full of various merchandise, and merchants from every region sit by their goods, and smoke placidly as they negotiate.

But we have received visits in our hotel from an Armenian merchant, young and comely--why not Khadra's cousin?--and he brought with him silks and stuffs at which all that was feminine in our nature swelled with delight. Tempted by his odors, we have come to his garden. The room is small and square, and rough-plastered. Upon the floor are strewn long deep boxes, and the comely young Armenian, in a flowing dark dress, reveals his treasures.

Scarfs, shawls, stuffs for dresses, morning gowns and vests, handkerchiefs, sashes, purses, and tobacco-bags are heaped in rich profusion. They are of the true Eastern richness, and in the true Eastern manner they rely upon that richness for their effect, and not upon their intrinsic tastefulness. The figures of the embroideries, for instance, are not gracefully designed, but the superb material suffices. They imply that there are none but beautiful women in the world, and that all women are brunettes. As the quiet merchant unfolds them, they have the mysterious charm of recalling all the beautiful brunettes who have reigned Zenobias, and Queens of Sheba, and Cleopatras, in the ruined realm of your past life.

But, Northerners and Westerners, we remember another beauty. We remember Palma Vecchio's golden-haired daughter, and the Venetian pictures, and the stories of angels with sunny locks, and the radiant Preziosa. The astute Armenian knows our thoughts. From the beginning was not the Oriental merchant a magician?

For while we sit smoking and delighted, the merchant, no less wily than the court-physician of Zobeide, opens the last box of all, and gradually unfolds the most beautiful garment the Howadji have ever seen. The coronation robes of emperors and kings, the most sumptuous costumes at court-festivals, all the elaboration of Western genius in the material and in the making of dresses, pale and disappear before the simple magnificence of this robe.

It is a bournouse or Oriental cloak, made of camel's hair and cloth of gold. The material secures that rich stiffness essential in a superb mantle, and the color is an azure turquoise, exquisite beyond words. The sleeves are cloth of gold, and the edges are wrought in gold, but with the most regal taste. It is the only object purely tasteful that we have seen. Nor is it of that negative safety of taste, which loves dark carriages and neutral tints in dress; but magnificent and imperial, like that of Rachel when she plays Thisbe, and nets her head with Venetian sequins. If the rest imply that all women are beautiful and brunettes, this proclaims the one superb Blonde, Queen of them all.

"Take that, Leisurlie, it was intended from the beginning of the world for an English beauty."

"Oh! _Kooltooluk!_ there is not a woman in England who could wear it."

Through the dewy distances of memory, as you muse in the dim chamber upon all who might worthily wear the garment, passes a figure perfect as morning, crowned with youth, and robed in grace, for whose image Alpine snows were purer and Italian skies more soft. But even while you muse, it passes slowly away out of the golden gates of possibility into the wide impossible.

As we stroll leisurely homeward, it is early afternoon. But the shops are closed--strange silence and desertion reign in the Bazaars--a few dark turbaned Christians and Jews yet linger, and a few children play.

"They are gone to the cafés and gardens," says Golden Sleeve.

--And we follow them.

TIGER ROCHE.--AN IRISH CHARACTER.

Among the characters distinguished for unbridled indulgence and fierce passions, who were, unfortunately, too frequently to be met with in Ireland in the last century, was one whose name attained so much celebrity as to become a proverb. "Tiger Roche," as he was called, was a native of Dublin, where he was born in the year 1729. He received the best education the metropolis could afford, and was instructed in all the accomplishments then deemed essential to the rank and character of a gentleman. So expert was he in the various acquirements of polite life, that at the age of sixteen he recommended himself to Lord Chesterfield, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who offered him, gratuitously, a commission in the army; but his friends having other views for him, they declined it. This seems to have been a serious misfortune to the young man, whose disposition and education strongly inclined him to a military life. His hopes were raised, and his vanity flattered, by the notice and offer of the viceroy; and in sullen resentment he absolutely refused to embark in any other profession his friends designed for him. He continued, therefore, for several years among the dissipated idlers of the metropolis, having no laudable pursuit to occupy his time, and led into all the outrages and excesses which then disgraced Dublin.

One night, in patrolling the city with his drunken associates, they attacked and killed a watch-man, who, with others, had attempted to quell a riot they had excited. He was, therefore, compelled to fly from Dublin. He made his way to Cork, where he lay concealed for some time, and from thence escaped to the plantations in North America. When the war broke out between France and England, he entered as a volunteer in one of the provincial regiments, and distinguished himself in several engagements with the Indians in the interest of the French, during which he seems to have acquired those fierce and cruel qualities by which those tribes are distinguished.