William George Browne

“ In Europe, education is the art of moulding the soul to the times; and the preceptor is commonly successful in conveying the instruction, of which experience has taught him the advantage, and which he is no stranger to the mode of applying. Advancement is the object; and to obtain it activity is required. This end is gained; but in the art of directing the powers of his mind to the attainment of his own happiness, or to the public utility, or of preserving his body sane and vigorous, the man remains still a child ”

“ The disease which attacks the principle of generation, and destroys, in its source, one among the few solaces with which human life is sparingly diversified, which the heroism and the philanthropy, or the ambition and the avarice, of Europeans have propagated wherever the malign destiny of other nations has ordained that their dominion should be established, does not appear in Egypt with all the terrors that mark its course in other countries. ”

“ In Egypt, a veil is invariably the guardian of real or affected modesty. In Dar-Fûr none attempt to conceal their faces but the wives of the great, whose rank demands some affectation of decency—who from satiety of indulgence become coquets, or whose vanity induces them to expect that concealment will ensnare the inexperienced with the hope of youth which has ceased to recommend them, or beauty by which they could never boast to be adorned. ”

“ Hence the Orientals are not much disturbed at the thoughts of death, but resign life without a sigh. The mind is tortured when the blossoms of hope are suddenly torn from it; but their gradual decay is not incompatible with a kind of tranquillity. ”

“ The most perfect remain is a small octagon building in the middle of the mosque, supported by eight Corinthian columns, the shaft, about ten feet high, of blue-and-white marble. In this small edifice is a chamber, which is said never to have been opened. Multitudes of columns appear around, to the number of more than a hundred, some in black marble, one has a small cavity, fabled an impression made by the hand of the Prophet. The cement is so hard as to evince that the Saracens were no strangers to the antient mode of preparing it. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to mention, that every Pasha has absolute power of life or death, there being no appeal from his jurisdiction.
The inhabitants of Damascus were formerly noted for their maltreatment of the Franks, but at present I found the pride of their ignorance somewhat abated, and observed no difference between them and other Oriental citizens. It is deeply to be regretted, that religion, intended to conciliate mankind, should be the chief cause of their ferocity against each other, and should, in an equal proportion, have mingled poisons and antidotes. ”

“ In many of the countries over which the Othman emperor exercises or claims the sovereign authority, the property of the land is claimed by the Government in right of conquest; and though material exceptions must have had place in Egypt, with respect to the great number who embraced Mohammedism, or consented to pay the Jizié, and who consequently did not forfeit their lands, all these distinctions are now confounded, and, alienations, forfeitures, and, more than all, violence, have reduced the whole to one undistinguished mass. ”

“ A light roof shelters the Fûrian from the sun and rain, and he fears not to be crushed by the mass which he has raised for his security. The conflagration may desolate his abode, but his soul is not appalled, for he has raised no monument of vanity to become its prey. The walls, wherever that material is to be procured, are built of clay; and the people of higher rank cover them with a kind of plaster, and colour them white, red, and black. The apartments are of three kinds, one is called a Donga, which is a cube commonly formed in the proportion of twenty feet by twelve. ”

“ Some slight omission of ceremonial will offend its pride, some sordid repulse will check its ambition; it will flame with anger at the breaking of a jar, or pine with jealousy at the like frailty in a mistress. ”

“ The European attributing more power to volition, ascribes to his own want of judgment or energy the result of whatever terminates unfavourably. Thus a part of his life is occupied by self-accusation, which, however, ensures no amelioration for the future.
In the East, if age be respected, it is respected, in part at least, from the decorous behaviour of the aged. In Europe, if it be rendered ridiculous, it is so too often, by a vain effort to perpetuate the character and manners of youth. ”

“ The Arabian and Persian histories and romances abound with traits of magnanimity, of generosity, justice, and courage, no way inferior to, but in some instances exceeding those of other nations. The Greeks and ourselves have indeed stigmatised them with the name of barbarians; but impartial inquiry proves that they are susceptible of all that is admired in a polished people; that crimes are treated among them as among other nations, and that though their passions may be expressed in a different way, they have always the same source and the same object. ”

“ Sitting in a chamber in Kahira or Tripoli, it is easy to give a plausible account of Northern Africa, from Sennaar and Gondar to Tombuctoo and Fez. It would not be difficult even to sanction it by the authority of the Jelabs. These people are never at a loss whatever question is asked them, and if they know not the name of the place inquired for, they recollect some other place of a name a little resembling it in sound, and describe what they never heard of by what they know. With regard to manners they are as little to be relied on. ”

“ See the European in conversation, even among his equals, he is not so solicitous to express such thoughts as rise in his mind, as to find some employment for his tongue. It is not to give utterance to what naturally occurs, but that conversation may be kept up, that all are anxious. Garrulities, and misconceptions are civilly uttered for arguments; and the abortions of fancy and caprice, hold the place of the sane offspring of judgment and reflection. Yet we laugh at them for using short and few phrases, (phrases courtes et rares, as Volney describes them,) when they have nothing to say! ”

“ Yet it is termed by the natives “Misr without an equal, Misr the mother of the world.” Convenience is comparative, and ideas of it must vary with manners and customs. The narrowness of the streets appears even necessary to a native, to protect him from the fierce effulgence of the meridian sun: a slight canopy, extended from house to house, affords him more pleasure than any architectural prospect could convey.
For about the space of three hundred years Egypt had been governed by the military aristocracy of the Mamlûks, when it was subdued by Sultan Selim, in the year 1517. ”

“ The people of Dar-Fûr are divided into those from the river, of whom I have already spoken, some few from the West, who are either Fukkara, or come for the purposes of trade. Arabs, who are very numerous, and some of whom are established in the country, and cannot quit it; they are of many different tribes, but the greater number are those who lead a wandering kind of life on the frontiers, and breed camels, oxen, and horses. Yet they are not, for the most part, in such a state of dependence as always to contribute effectually to the strength of the monarch in war, or to his supplies in peace. ”

“ The Arabs of the desert are as free from blindness as any people. They never sleep with the face exposed, and have moreover the advantage of being devoid of the dust and other supposed causes of psorophthalmia in the city. The disorder appears no where so much as in Kahira, because no where are all the causes so much combined: yet it is seen in Alexandria, Damiatt, and in Upper Egypt, which shews that the cause is not confined to Kahira. Among the poorer class of all countries prevails a kind of insouciance. ”

“ The principal inhabitants of Cossîr came successively to compliment us on our arrival. They all scanned me with an eye of suspicion, and the more so as I could not yet speak the Arabic fluently. But none so much as an old Sherîf, a considerable man in the place, who having travelled to Mecca, Constantinople, Bakdad, and other parts of the Turkish empire, had become acquainted with the various orders of men, and acquired an intuitive discrimination of character which very few in that country possess. ”

“ The condition of slave is so very distinct in Egypt from what it is in other countries, that they who defend the practice of trading in human flesh by its antiquity, and the general consent of nations, should be well aware how they adduce the example of Egypt.—In Kahira, when a slave is legally purchased in the market, if after any length of time he feel discontented with his master, has only to say, “Carry me to the market,” (Sûk-es Sultân,) and the master is legally compellable to offer him for sale. ”

“ This tranquillity, this absence of pain, (for joy, however poignant, is but a transient gleam, a coruscation, which passing, renders the obscurity which succeeds it more sensible,) is the single species of happiness of which mankind is allowed to partake.
A man of great sensibility has his feelings hourly wounded by minute accidents, at which one of less lively sensations would smile. ”

“ The commanding influence of a system so flattering to the pride of its professors, and operating so powerfully on their hopes and fears as Mohammedism, aided by the dread of present suffering, has so far counteracted the strong impulse of avarice, that gaming is in a great degree banished from society in the East. All the evils and inconveniences therefore of that practice, so severely felt throughout Europe, are almost unknown in the Turkish empire. ”

“ The distinctive character of a nation is not to be sought in great cities. The manners of these reciprocally approximate. In that part of Egypt where the character of women is unsophisticated by mixture, however strong their passions, they are not unchaste. This perhaps proceeds more from the influence of public opinion, than the sanctions of municipal law.
Among the people, as they are to take part in domestic duties, their education is bounded by the useful. Among the opulent it extends to the ornamental, and many females in Kahira are taught to read and write. ”

“ The Egyptians entered the province of Muggrib, by the town of Zenata. Four years after they seized Tripoli. Mûnis, governor of the province of Cairoan, passed over to the enemy. Moaz lost a pitched battle, and took shelter in Mehedié. The Egyptians seized his capital Cairoan, stopped the springs, turned the course of the river, and destroyed the magnificent palaces and delicious gardens of the monarchs of Africa. Moaz, overwhelmed with his misfortunes, sunk into the grave, and closed a long and fortunate reign in the utmost misery. ”

“ On the West of the W. branch of the Nile, the arable lands are very narrow, but to the [491] East they extend along the road to Bilbeis and Salehich. The villages indeed are ill built; yet a house is here of little use but as a shelter from the sun. One of our neat, snug, brick houses, covered with red tiles, would be absolutely intolerable in Egypt. They are poor because the government is oppressive, not because they are uninclined to labour. The muddy appearance of the Nile water is no motive for any Egyptian to abstain from drinking it ”

“ But if all the arguments to confute this new theory should fail, one fact remains which is invincible. The persons of the antient Egyptians, preserved as it were entire by the prescience of that people concerning the errors into which posterity might fall, exhibit an irrefragable proof of their features and of the colour of their skin, which is now, by the quantity of mummies that have been imported into Europe, subject to the inspection of the curious almost throughout that quarter of the globe. ”