fate of his helpmate of any vital interest to him, the priests would long ago have distilled a heaven for her out of their accommodating crucible, the Koran. In this respect, the ancient Egyptians were as superior to their descendants as in every thing else; their women were carefully mummied up for immortality. One of their greatest sovereigns was Nitocris, a queen; and the name of Cleopatra is associated with the last days of Egyptian glory.

VI.

MAGIC MASONRY-MAGNETISM.

Oh, never rudely will I blame his faith,
In the might of stars and angels; it is not merely
The human being's pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance.
SCHILLER.

EGYPT has been in all ages the reputed stronghold of magic and of mystery. She was the immediate inheretrix of the knowledge, the arts, and the sciences which flowed into other lands, with their possessors, from the concentrated wisdom of the world on the Babel dispersion. As far as we can penetrate into the dim past by the light of conjecture, the mightiest mass of humanity parted thence into two great streams the one expanding into India, the other into Abyssinia, Ethiopia, and, finally, into the land of Egypt. The powers with which the early race of man was endowed, seem never to have been wholly lost; at least they lingered for centuries under the tent of the Chaldean and the caverns of Africa. The grandsons of Adam were skilled in sciences which the world in these latter ages has only begun to obtain a knowledge of; and in the days when angels mingled their blood with that of earth, art and intellectual power probably attained a height from which they continued to fall for four thousand years, and from which they can never rise again. In the busy and distracting life consequent on the universal emigration from Babel, much of this knowledge was undoubtedly lost, as, being oral, it was the first to suffer from the confusion of tongues, but astronomy still kept her watch on the starlit plains of Chaldea; architecture wrought her wonders at Carli Ipsambul,

and stupendous Thebes; and magic cherished its mysteries in the caverns of Dakke, Ekmim, and Domdaniel. The Egyptian priests seem long to have retained somewhat of the ancient superhuman knowledge, but, being purely traditional, it was at any time liable to contract or expire under the jealous guardianship of some high priest, who wished to be the last of his power. In the mysteries of Isis some of the great secrets were darkly shadowed forth; and enough has already been discovered in the hierophantic walls of her ancient temples, to prove the intimacy of their authors with subjects of which the wise men of our day are just beginning to obtain glimpses, amongst others that of freemasonry, which is now little more than a convivial bond. A grand master of the order will talk darkly about Hiram, and look mysterious at the mention of Jachin and Boaz, but there are not perhaps three men in England who understand the full meaning of the three penalties. Magnetism also appears to have been well understood by the Egyptian hierarchy, not only from some of the effects we find recorded, but in one of the chambers whose hieroglyphics are devoted to medical subjects, we find a priest in the very act of that mesmerism which is pretended to have been discovered a few years ago. The patient is seated in a chair while the operator describes the mesmeric passes, and an attendant waits behind to support the head when it has bowed in the mysterious sleep. But to return to magic-Moses was well skilled in this as well as in all the other "learning of the Egyptians," and when he proffered miracles to Pharaoh, the latter sent to Dakke and to Ekmim for magicians to oppose him. Their power seems to have been real, though like that of Elymas in later times, it served only as a foil to the mightier works of the divine missionary. When the Israelites were come out of Egypt, they had become so imbued with magical practices, that we find them forbidden upon pain of death; yet four hundred years afterwards Saul found a witch at Endor, and books have been written upon Solomon's necromancies. The study of magic is still followed in Egypt, as it has always been. Caviglia told Lord Lindsay that he had pursued it to the bounds of what was lawful for man to

know; and M. Preiss, an eminent antiquarian, is now deeply engaged in the same pursuit. There are several persons in Cairo who profess to practise magic, but the most remarkable is the Sheikh Abd-el-kader Maugrabee, who has been introduced to English notice by Lord Prudhoe, Mr. Salt, Mr. Lane, Lord Lindsay,and several other writers. None of these travellers were men likely to lend themselves to a deception, yet they were all more or less convinced of the reality of this magi cian's pretensions. On my arrival in Cairo I found some difficulty in inducing him to come to my hotel, as he had been recently kicked down stairs by a party of young Englishmen for a failure in his performances. At length, through the kindness of our consul, I procured a visit from him one evening. He was rather a majestic-looking old man, though he required the imposing effect of his long grey beard and wide turban to counteract the disagreeable expression of his little twinkling eyes. I had a pipe and coffee served to him, and he discoursed without reserve upon the subject of his art in which he offered to instruct me. After some time a boy of about twelve years old was brought in and the performance began. He took the child's right hand in his, and described a square figure on its palm, on which he wrote some Arabic characters; while this was drying, he wrote upon a piece of paper an invocation to his familiar spirits, which he burnt with some frankincense in a brazier at his feet. For a moment a white cloud of fragrant smoke enveloped him and the cowering child who sat before him, but it had entirely dissipated before the phantasms made their appearance. Then taking the boy's hand in his, he poured some ink into the hollow of it, and began to mutter rapidly; his countenance assumed an appearance of intense anxiety, and the perspiration stood upon his brow, occasionally he ceased his incantations to inquire if the boy saw any thing, and being answered in the negative, he went on more vehemently than before. Meanwhile the little Arab gazed on the inky globule in his hand with an eager and fascinated look, and at length exclaimed, "I see them now!" Being asked what he saw, he described a man sweeping with a brush, soldiers, a camp, and lastly the sultan.

The magician desired him to call for flags, and he described several of various colours, as coming at his call. When a red flag made its appearance the magician said the charm was complete, and that we might call for whom we pleased. Sir Henry Hardinge was the first person asked for, and after some seconds' delay the boy exclaimed, "he is here." He described him as a little man in a black dress, white cravat, and yellow (perhaps grey) hair. I asked if he had both legs, alas! he declared he had only one. I then asked for Lord E-k-n. He described him as a very long man, with green glass over his eyes, dressed in black and always bending forward. I then asked for Lablache, who appeared as a little young man with a straw hat; the Venus de Medici represented herself as a young lady with a bonnet and a green veil, and the boy was turned out. We then got an intelligent little negro slave belonging to the house. The magician did not seem to like him much, but went through all the former proceedings over again, during which the actors formed a very picturesque group. The anxious magician with his long yellow robes, the black child with his red tarboosh, white tunic, glittering teeth, and bead-like eyes, gazing earnestly into his dark little hand. The dragoman held a candle, whose light shone vividly on the child, the old man, and his own fine figure, his black beard and moustache contrasting well with those of the hoary necromancer, as did his blue and crimson dress with the pale drapery of the other. Picturesqueness, however, was the only result, the boy insisted that he could see nothing, though his starting eye-balls showed how anxiously he strove to do so. The hour was so late that no other boys were to be found, and so the seance broke up. he was gone I asked my dragoman, Mahmoud, (who had been dragoman to Lord Prudhoe during both his visits to Egypt,) what he thought of the magician. He said he considered him rather a humbug than otherwise, but added that there certainly was something in it. He said not only did Lord Prudhoe believe in the magic, but that Mrs. Ly, a most enterprising traveller, whom he had once attended, had the ink put into her hand, and that she clearly saw the man with the brush,

When

the soldiers, and the camp, though she could see no more. He told me that the people of Cairo believed the Sheikh had made a league with the "genti a basso ;" and that he himself believed him to be any thing but a santon. A friend of mine at Alexandria said, that he knew an Englishman who had learnt the art, and practised it with success; and a lady mentioned to me that a young female friend of hers had tried the experiment, and had been so much terrified by the first apparition that she had fainted, and could not be induced to try it again. I have gone into these details as I know that the subject has excited a good deal of interest, and have only to add my own impression, that whatever powers this man may have formerly possessed, the sceptic may indulge largely in unbelief as to any supernatural aid that he receives at present.

I was not surprised to find that magnetism has its professors in Egypt, and that it had been practised from all time in this dreamy and mystical land. The climate seems particularly favourable to the development of its phenomena, and we may easily conceive what effects it must have produced on the lively imagination of this superstitious people, when it can puzzle and astonish in the midst of London. In the old time priest and doctor were synonymous, and the work of the latter was attributed to the influence of the former character. Their temples were placed

in smiling and lonely places, where the imagination of the patient or the proselyte, was gradually prepared to receive the desired impression on their bodies or their minds, or the one was made to act upon the other. As I have mentioned before, in one of the chambers of the tombs is found a magnetizing priest under the figure of Anubis, one of his hands is raised above the head of the sick person, and the other is on his breast. When priestcraft began to wane in Egypt, magnetism, amongst other of its instruments, passed over into Greece, and the Pythoness directed the politics of the world by her revelations when in the ecstatic state of clairvoyance. A very intelligent French physician, in the pasha's service, whom I met upon the Nile, pointed out to me a curious passage in Plautus, which leaves no doubt as to magnetism having been known to the Romans. Amphytr. sc. 1. Mercurius et Sosia. Mer. "Quod si ego illum tractim tangam ut dormiat ?" Sos. "Servaveris, nam continuas has tres noctes pervigilavi." The same person told me that he believed great and extensive benefit might be produced by the use of magnetism in Egypt particularly, where every constitution seemed subject to its influences, while in France and England its action is chiefly confined to the more delicate and finer organizations of mind. Sans adieu.-Yours,

E. W.

points in the opposite direction; and we would fain believe that it was this conviction which pressed home upon the minds of ministers, and induced them to follow the advice of Lord Ashley, in introducing their factory bill with its educational clauses. For convinced as we are that sooner or later some measure framed on this model must become the law of the land, we venture to trust that it will form one of the patriotic acts of the present government. Indeed, no small share of credit remains to the government for what it has attempted, though it is much to be regretted that it had not the firmness to carry through its measures to a successful issue.

It

Thoroughly acquainted, as we claim to be, with the wants and necessities of the manufacturing population of England, we do not hesitate to pronounce the dropped measure of the government one of the wisest ever conceived by the mind of man. embraced a comprehensive plan for the emancipation of the urban masses from a condition of moral and physical degra dation scarcely paralleled in the whole civilized world. Boeotia (which, indeed, had its poets, historians, and philosophers-its Pindars, Hesiods, and Plutarchs,) was not a fouler blot upon the classic soil of Greece, than is the factory system of England upon English society.

The bill introduced by Sir James Graham was a fine initiatory step in a course of legislation, which, if persevered in, must have drawn the artificial state of society in the manufac turing districts within natural limits, and made it subject to those uniform rules, by the operation of which an abundant population can alone become a "nation's strength." Again the new bill transcended all previous measures of a similar kind because in aiming at the improvement of the general condition of the working people it comprehended that vital principle of legisla tion which adds moral and religious appliances to the ordinary means for securing obedience to the law. Indeed, the strength of the measure lay in the educational clauses. They nerved, with a moral temper, those provisions which bore upon the physical condition of the workpeople, and would have made them effectual in

struments for the permanent amelioration of that condition. The hours of labour were not curtailed to make room for a fatal indolence: the time reclaimed from the workshop was not to be surrendered to the haunts of pleasure or debauchery: that which was taken from Mammon was to be consecrated to Heaven; and we have that faith in the happy moral results of every measure of this kind, which takes religion for its basis, that we regard it in the light of an impossibility that Sir James Graham's bill, though it curtailed the duration of labour, would not eventually improve not merely the social but the physical condition of the labouring poor. Abundant pecuniary aids to gratification can never compensate the poor man for that self-respect which brings so much tranquil virtue and so much sterling comfort in its train. The man destitute of moral and religious feelings and impulses, even if he gain twice the amount of wages enjoyed by his neighbour, who has been trained to the knowledge and appreciation of Christian duties, is, in truth, not half so well off, because he dissipates the bulk of his earnings in intemperance and profligacy, brings home slovenly, irregular, and unclean habits to his dwelling, and inculcates improvidence and extravagance with their attendant miseries in his family. The only notion of amelioration which suggests itself to the senses of such a man, is an increased facility for indulging in his favourite pursuits, and he overlooks the physical evils which spring out of long hours of toil in the additional means with which they provide him for sensual ends. To amend the present generation of grown persons by means of an education bill, would, we fear, be a hopeless and unprofitable effort. For them we have other specifics which we shall name presently. But with reference to the rising generation we may accomplish much by giving them such a moral and religious training as shall elevate their position in the social scale, and purge them of those habits of profligacy and intemperance which are a curse to themselves, and render them a pestilence to society. The legislature would thus have triumphed far more effectually over the more salient evils of the manufacturing sys tem, than by the enacting of any merely