THE PRINCE OF WALES' TOUR IN THE EAST.

In the days when our grandfathers were rising into active life, and for a century, or a century and a half before that period, it was considered essential to the completion of a gentleman's education, that he should have made what was then called "THE GRAND TOUR."

In general this grand tour comprised France, Italy, part of Germany, the Low Countries, and a dash, it may be, into Russia or Spain. Now and then it comprehended a visit to Athens or Constantinople, and when this had been achieved, the tourist was considered for the rest of his life an authority on all matters oriental and antiquarian.

But royal journeys were few and far between; it was, indeed, a rarity to see a sovereign out of his own dominions. Our Hanoverian kings did occasionally visit the continent, but it was only to see their electoral inheritance; and for a prince to travel in search of information would have been thought in the highest degree unconstitutional. Peter the Great's example was not to be drawn into a precedent, and the best excuse to be made for that eccentric monarch was, that he was more than half a barbarian.

It has been but lately that a break has been made in this magic circle; a few princes, among whom Prince Adalbert of Prussia holds a distinguished place, have determined to see the world for themselves.

The late enlightened Prince Consort devised an extended system of education for him who was, in the course of God's providence, most probably destined to ascend the throne of these realms. He was to enjoy the advantages which the ancient universities of the kingdom presented to him, to attend a course of lectures in the accomplished metropolis of the North; he was to have a strict military training, and to be skilled in all manly exercises-and while the intellect and physical frame were to be thus fitted for the onerous duties which devolve on a king, the lighter and more graceful parts of education were kept in mind. The young prince saw foreign courts, and made the personal acquaintance of those who in due course of time were to occupy positions similar to his own.

It is alike honourable to the royal parents and the youthful prince, that this scheme has been freely and successfully carried out, not, of course, technically, but still with sufficient closeness to render the Prince of Wales one of the best informed men of his age in Europe.

It need hardly be said that religion was not neglected; and the Eastern tour which his royal highness has recently completed, may be said to have put the last touches to an education, perhaps, the most perfect that ever a prince enjoyed. Not for many centuries has an English

KAHIRAH, THE VICTORIOUS.

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prince trod those plains hallowed by the footsteps of our Saviour, and which, in addition to this great and overwhelming interest, are consecrated to us by the exploits of more than one of our noblest kings. It must have stirred up all the royal spirit in one who was to inherit the glorious crown of England, to stand where Richard the Lion-hearted swept away before him, like a hail storm of war, the pride of the Saracenic chivalry-to remember that even in those remote days, an English army never counted its adversaries, and that no generalship, not even that of the heroic Saladin, could avail against its attack.

But in addition to this feeling of gratified nationality, other advanages were not unreasonably expected from the proposed tour. The prince was to visit Malta, one of the most important dependencies of the British crown, to proceed to Alexandria and Cairo, to examine for himself the condition of a country so important to our Indian Empire as Egypt, to establish a personal intimacy with its able and liberal ruler, to behold the awe-inspiring monuments of the ancient Egyptian monarchy, and then to make that pilgrimage which the religious of the middle ages deemed an almost certain passport to salvation. We need hardly say that it forms no part of our present intention to give a detailed narrative of a tour like this; we shall but indicate a few points of interest which it comprises, and notice a few reflections which must have occurred to the prince while journeying in those far celebrated but little visited localities.

His royal highness arrived at Alexandria at the end of February, 1862, and was immediately received by Said Pacha, the viceroy, with all that profuse and splendid hospitality which still characterizes the higher classes in the East. Alexandria would probably impress the prince, as it certainly impresses everybody else, as a particularly dirty, uncomfortable place, combining with singular infelicity all the worst points of a western and an eastern city-hot, dirty, dilapidated, and plague-stricken like the one-exposed, extortionate, and shabby-genteel like a bad specimen of the other; but Said Pacha no doubt took care that his royal guest should suffer no personal inconvenience, and the unpromising aspect of the place would be all that could leave an unpleasant reminiscence on the mind of the prince. It was at Cairo, that picturesque city of filth and magnificence, that a true sense of what the East really is, began to dawn on the mind of the royal traveller. No city is so truly oriental as this African metropolis. She is splendid in her delicate Saracenic architecture; but melancholy in her ruins and squalor. Yet in that bright Egyptian sunshine, war-worn and weather-worn, nothing can deprive her of her interest. She sits still a queen. She has vanquished the ages, and well deserves her title, "Kahirah," or the Victorious. Cairo is neither paved, drained, nor lighted, that is, as a European would understand these terms. Thousands of yellow dogs

are her scavengers, and so well are they regulated by a home policy of their own, that any dog straying into the district of another will be torn to pieces by those who have the right to dwell there. No gas is there save for the palaces; and no paving, at least in the more ancient parts, save that which remains of the earliest which her streets witnessed. The traveller who is obliged to be out at night lights his way with a paper lantern, and has to keep a sharp look out for holes in his path. But the dangers are well worth encountering, for the sake of the many objects of interest on every side.. Here are the earliest known specimens of the pointed arch, here the architectural master-pieces of

the reign of Saladin. Here rose and here fell the empire of the Mamelooks, those sovereign slaves, "without father, without mother, without descent." Here are their tombs, glorious in decay. In the middle distance stand the Pyramids, those wondrous structures, whose antiquity Sir Gardener Wilkinson refers to four and twenty centuries before the Christian era, and which some have imagined, without sufficient grounds, to have been erected by the labour of the Israelites. Leaving the picturesque streets of the Victorious, the royal party proceeded to the

*It should be remarked that the title "Tombs of the Mamelooks," as applied to the edifices represented in the engraving, does not pass without cavil.

THE PHARAOHS AND THE PTOLEMIES AS ARCHITECTS.

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Pyramids, and here the prince astonished the Arab guides by declining their help, and mounting by himself. A very predatory tribe indeed are these Arabs of the Pyramids, and not always safe to deal with. But recently a gentlemen, on his overland way to China, was carefully assisted on to a block, not far from the summit of the greatest of the three, from which he could neither ascend nor descend without further aid, when the Arabs declared that they would leave him unless he immediately gave them twenty dollars, which he was weak enough to

do. Another gentleman, under similar circumstances, not only refused, but threatened to make their backs acquainted with the British blackthorn; they, after a few moments' deliberation, proceeded to conduct their "fare" to the summit, and on his arrival at the base he faithfully fulfilled his promise as to the black-thorn, to their great edification and improvement.

And now the broad Nile received, for the first time, an English prince on its mighty waters, exhibiting at Philæ, Edfu, and Esneh, the works in which the Ptolemies vainly attempted to rival the more ancient magnificence of the Pharaohs. One of these, the great temple at Edfu, has

been by government cleared from the incumbrance of the Arab village which had gradually grown up around it. The result has been at once to display the beauty of the structure, to show the exact arrangements of an Egyptian temple, but, at the same time, to render evident the great inferiority of the architecture of the later, to that of the earlier ages.

At Karnak, the Thebes of the older monarchy, the glories of the Pharaohs were exhibited to the royal tourist. Here stand those temples and palaces amidst which the great Rameses II. walked, contemplating the increasing trophies of his glorious reign. It is impossible to see these remains without remarking how beautiful are the proportions observed by the architects of this period of high Egyptian art, and how completely this chief of essentials was lost sight of in the time of the Ptolemies. Nor, indeed, is this all; in no place, so well as in Karnak, can the difference between ancient and modern civilization be discovered. One day's examination is sufficient. There the whole plan of a city, composed of temples and palaces, is revealed at once. Each building is in due subordination to the whole vast design. Dynasties acted as one man, and kings thought it no discredit to be as cyphers in the great account; centuries were occupied in the fulfilment of the grand idea. There was no haste in those ages, one reign obediently followed out the plan of its predecessors, and the result is such as can be seen in no other place, and must be seen to be understood.

Awe-struck by the contemplation of such sublimity, the mind despises our modern capitals. London, and even Imperial Paris, sink into insignificance, until the eye, fatigued with splendour, seeks repose, and allows the mind to inquire into what lies but a little below the surface. Egypt and Babylon, and probably all ancient monarchies, were despotisms in the fullest sense of the word. In the first named realm, the priesthood shared with royalty the possession of the land, and its treasures were exhausted to maintain the power as well as the splendour of both institutions; tradition has embalmed in the history of Herodotus what had been the condition of the people under the monarchs whose structures thus astonish the eyes of posterity. Of their homes no fragments remain; they were such as are still to be found in the crowded cities of China, filthy, pestilential, narrow, perishing. The inhabitants were drafted away by hundreds of thousands for public works, and it was only by this awful expenditure of humanity that the Pharaohs are now conspicuous as the great architects of antiquity.

On the return of the royal party to Cairo, where it should be mentioned that Said Pacha had placed an elegant and commodious palace on the Shoobra Road at the prince's service, the travellers stayed a while at Assiout to see the jerced exercise performed by Arnaouts and Arabs in the service of the governor. The wondrous dexterity displayed by these swarthy sons of the desert, may perhaps have recalled to