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CHAP. that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion; the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.

In the administration of Egypt,* Amrou ba

from Egypt, and not from Constantinople, or mount Athos, (Westein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p. 8, &c.), might possibly be among them.

I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of Quintilian, (Institut. Orator. x, i), in which that judicious critic enumerates and appretiates the series of Greek and Lat n classics.

1 Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject Wotton (Reflections on ancient and modern learning, p. 85-95) argues with solid sense, against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for barbaric science, would scarcely admit the Indian or Ethiopic books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion.

This curious and authentic intelligeuce of Murtadi (p. 284-289)

has

CHAP.

LI.

stration of

lanced the demands of justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were defended by God; and of the people of the alli- Adminiance, who were protected by man. In the re- Egypt. cent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province. To the former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood would be doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their innocent brethren, whom their envy had laboured to injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion and honour to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their faith, and to content themselves with the legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the management of the revenue he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes, deducted on every branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare. Under his administration the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road

has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or by the self-sufficient compilers of the modern Universal Historv.

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CHAP. from Memphis to Medina.' But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars; and a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea. This inland navigation, which would have joined the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean, was soon discontinued as useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus; and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of Arabia."

Riches

and populousness.

Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular country." "O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a com

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pound of black earth and green plants, be"tween a pulverized mountain and a red sand. "The distance from Syene to the sea is a

1 Eutychius. Annal. tom. ii, p. 320. Elmacin. Hist. Saracen. p. 35. On these obscure canals, the reader may try to satisfy himself from d'Anville, (Mem. sur l'Egypte, p. 108 110, 124, 132), and a learned thesis maintained and printed at Strasburg in the year 1770, (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque molimina, p. 39-47, 68-70). Even the supine Turks have agitated the old project of joining the two seas, (Memoires du Baron de Tott, tom. iv).

n A small volume, des Merveilles, &c. de l'Egypte, composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated from an Arabic MS. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild and legendary: but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his account of the conquest and geography of his native country, (See the correspondence of Amrou and Omar, p. 279-289).

LI.

"month's journey for an horseman. Along the CHAP. valley descends a river, on which the blessing "of the Most High reposes both in the evening " and morning, and which rises and falls with "the revolutions of the sun and moon. When "the annual dispensation of providence unlocks "the springs and fountains that nourish the "earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sound

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ing waters through the realm of Egypt: the "fields are overspread by the salutary flood; " and the villages communicate with each other "in their painted barks. The retreat of the " inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land may be "compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and "their native indolence is quickened by the "lash of the task-master, and the promise of the "flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. "Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches "which they extract from the wheat, the bar'ley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, " and the cattle, are unequally shared between "those who labour and those who possess.

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According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, "the face of the country is adorned with a "silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden harvest." Yet this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the

In a twenty years residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre, ii, particularly p. 70, 75); the fertility of the land, (lettre ix.) From a college at Cambridge, he poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance.

What

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CHAP. first year of the conquest might afford some colour to an edifying fable. It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin' had been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the license of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages that, exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects;" or twenty millions of either sex, and of every age that three hundred millions of gold or

What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his wat'ry wings;
If with advent'rous oar, and ready sail,

The dusky people drive before the gale :

Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride,

That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide,

(Mason's Works, and Memoires of Gray, p. 199, 200). P Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit an human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, cr a miracle of successors of Mahomet.

Maillet, Description de l'Egypte, p. 22. He mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the generality of these villages contain two or three thousand persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large cities.

Eutych. Annal. tom. ii, p. 308 311. The twenty millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth, of mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of men to women as seventeen to sixteen, (Recherches sur la population de la France, p. 71, 72). The president Goguet (Origine des Arts, &c. tom. iii, p. 26, &c) bestows twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.