drawn as private soldiers and sent to the Gold Coast, but that a cheque for 50l. by next post might avert the doom? I fancy not. Still, and in spite of all, many fellahs do work hard, speculate, and save money. What happens? They have no strong boxes, or trust in those who have: the coins are buried. Millions of pounds in gold are imported into Egypt every year, and yet money is always scarce, exchange on Europe being seldom less than two and a half per cent. The gold is in the country somewhere, but few of its holders dare to circulate it. It is paid for the produce of the earth, and back into the earth it goes; the hider dies, and the hoard is lost. When the present Viceroy came into power, he declared that he would not countenance forced labour; but a week never passes in which it is not used on his own estates, and by his government for public works. The native weighers, lightermen, camel drivers, carters, and others in the employment of European merchants, are frequently carried off to forced labour by order of the government, and even Bakshesh cannot always release them. Twenty-four regular mail steamers enter and quit the port of Alexandria every month, and there are frequently ten or a dozen British merchant steamers waiting at one time to be discharged or loaded. I can find no reliable return of the number of other vessels which visit this port, but can vouch for its being always full of shipping. Yet there is no landing-stage, no pier, no jetty, no dock of any description; the Transit Company have a wharf which would be a disgrace to a river-side knacker's yard, and that is all. At the Arsenal, where goods may now be landed, there is one crane. At the Custom House there are two, the second being a temporary affair, rigged up by the crew of a Liverpool steam-ship. The cargoes are discharged into lighters, and from these huddled on shore anyhow. Take a ploughed field in Surrey, and employ a company of giants to cast pell-mell therein the contents of five hundred holds, and you may form a faint idea of the condition in which the so-called Custom House of Alexandria was kept for the four months preceding last March. Without an attempt at assortment, without the slightest protection from the weather or thieves, in a place open to all the world by land or sea, lay, piled together in inextricable confusion, bales of Manchester goods, cases of machinery and furniture, casks of oil and wine, packages of cutlery, tin-ware, iron rods, and plates, "copper bottoms," crates of glass and crockery, boxes of wearing apparel, and all the other requisites of a country which manufactures nothing but the simplest and rudest commodity. It was quite possible to form a list of these various wares, for twenty per cent. of the packages had been smashed in the rough treatment they had received since they left the ship's side, and their contents were scattered abroad. Here, crushed under a main shaft, for want of which some engine in the interior had stopped work, that nothing but the rain could reach it, you might catch a glimpse of what was once a box of knives. There, you might find bales of "shirtings" and "sewed muslins" standing two feet deep in mud; and a cotton gin or a fire pump rusting in the damp. Everywhere confusion, neglect, and a sacrifice of property which increased day by day. This mountain range of costly ruin covered some two acres of ground. The merchandise upon its verge could not be removed, because the streets and roads leading therefrom were all but impassable, and the government had seized for their own use all means of transport. The goods more in the centre could only be reached by a climber worthy of enrolment in the Alpine Club; could be moved by no power, because no power could be brought to bear for its removal. The rain poured down upon it, the mud soaked up into it, the thieves, official and non-official, picked and stole it; and there it lay, not for days and weeks, but for months. The merchants expostulated, and at last combined for the most part, and protested in terms more energetic and truthful than polite. The Viceroy appointed a commission, which fully carried out all that was required of it ;-it was intended to do nothing, and it did it. An energetic Englishman, the same who had erected the second crane in the Custom House, offered to clear out that Augean stable in a week, if he were given labour and his own way. He was just the man to do the work, therefore he was not allowed to undertake it. In the meantime, goods consigned to the Viceroy, including agricultural implements and cotton-cleaning machinery, to enable him to compete with his brother farmers up the country, were landed and passed, with other folk's labour and at other folk's expense, and King Bakshesh aided his special friends. The British Consul was requested to order that machinery intended for the Viceroy should be loaded on the top of cargoes from Liverpool, in order that it might be more speedily discharged. And the officer who made this request had served in the navy. Fancy steam-engines and hydraulic presses on the top of butter casks and fine goods! Imagine the trim of a ship thus loaded. The exports are cotton, cotton seed, and, till lately, grain. Pick and clean your cotton, pack it, carry it to the platform of the railway station or the bank of the canal, and in ordinary countries you have done all that is necessary to ensure its despatch. Not so in Egypt. There, the sovereign of the country is its sovereign, and something more. He is a farmer and a manufacturer and a merchant upon his own account, and not for amusement or experiment, but for profit. The railway is his own, so is the canal, he can monopolise every truck upon the one and every boat upon the other; the water-carriage on the Nile is also at his command, and he uses all three unsparingly. All his own produce was whisked up to port before a single bale of that belonging to his competitors could be touched; it is even said that he used his men-of-war to transport cotton to Marseilles. Whilst the vice-regal bales were being thus disposed of, vulgar consignments remained stationary, and merchants who had contracted to deliver cotton in Liverpool by a stated day, and had the stuff ready at stations a few hours from Alexandria, were obliged to buy afresh to fulfil their obligations, because their own property was not forthcoming. The Viceroy's requirements having been satisfied, a general scramble ensued. The means of transport provided by the monopolists of traffic in Egypt was utterly and hopelessly inadequate; all the stations on the railway, a single line, were choked up with cotton, and then King Bakshesh came out with a smile and said, " My friends, you have packed your goods very nicely, you have brought them to the railway and paid the fare-what will you give me if I send them off?” Now, be it remembered that the great increase in the trade and production of Egypt did not occur suddenly, or without due cause and warning; the first gun fired at Fort Sumter was the signal to its ruler to be up and stirring. Its principal port is to a country what its front door is to a house. What is the use of having a magnificent mansion, if you cannot get in to furnish it? What is the value of a fertile country, if its produce be choked up on the banks of its harbour, unable to pass out of it? The harbour and port accommodation of Alexandria remains as it was twenty-eight years ago. A few new warehouses are being built for the Custom House, but how are the goods to be got into them? Several descendants of the famous Pangloss are now settled in Egypt. There is Herr Pangloss, the great capitalist, who does little bills for its government; M. de Pangloss, Member (of course) of the Legion of Honour, who is part of the furniture of the Vice-regal antechamber; and the eminent British firm of Pangloss and Company, a member of which is 66 own correspondent” to a great London newspaper. According to these gentlemen the Viceroy is the best of all possible Viceroys, as indeed he is to them; and the administration of his one port, custom house, and railway, the best of all possible administrations. They have great faith in good intentions, have the MM. Pangloss, and draw notes of admiration upon the future of Egypt, which we may be sure its government discount upon liberal terms, and which pass current in England and elsewhere. Our Panglosses all wear rose-coloured spectacles: but, as I am not provided with a pair, I see things in a different light, and set down-without malice-that which I see, and ask only that it may be taken for what it is worth. But the plain truth is not worth much in Egypt. EARL PEMBROKE'S MONUMENT. WILLIAM HERBERT, Earl Pembroke, of Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, the favourite of Edward IV., and one of the principal leaders of the Yorkists, was one of the many illustrious victims of the desolating Wars of the Roses. He fell into the hands of the Lancastrians, after the disastrous Battle of Danesmoor, and, with his brother, Sir Richard Herbert, was put to death on the day following. In his will, executed on the day of his death, he directed that his body should be buried in the family chapel attached to the Church of Abergavenny; notwithstanding this, however, his remains, probably at the king's suggestion, were interred in the magnificent Abbey of Tintern, on the banks of the Wye. "Herbert is dead! Heaven rest his soul! I've lost "His honour was a diamond without flaw "Hero of heroes' mould, he scoffed at tears, Though none less cruel. I have seen his fire "Yet they had need stand firm whose acts aver "Earl Pembroke's dead. No frippery shall defile His funeral rites. Deep in the sacred floor Dig for his rest in Tintern ; line the aisle With bearded men, black-armoured, from the door And round the grave; ten torches light the pileTen, and no more." LORD OAKBURN'S DAUGHTERS. CHAPTER XLI. MR. CARLTON'S DREAMS. THERE was a sound of revelry in the Red Lion inn. A dinner of the townspeople was taking place there to celebrate some cause of national rejoicing. Filling the chair-as the newspapers had it the next day-was Lewis Carlton, Esquire; a great man now amidst his fellow townsmen. People are taken with show; people are taken with grandeur; and Mr. Carlton displayed both. He was successful as a medical man, he was rather liked as a social one; and his wife's rank brought him always a certain consideration. The money he had inherited from his father, together with the proceeds of his own practice, enabled him to live in a style attempted by few in South Wennock. The town talked indeed of undue extravagance; whispers went round of consequent debt: but that was the affair of Mr. Carlton and Lady Laura alone, and was nothing to anybody. Certainly there was a wide contrast between the quiet style of living of John Grey and his partner Mr. Lycett, and the costly one of Mr. Carlton. The partners were prudent men, putting by for their children: Mr. Carlton was not a prudent man as regarded pecuniary matters, and he had no children to put by for. Carriages and horses and servants and entertainments made his house somewhat unlike a medical man's. But the public, I say, are led away by all this, and Mr. Carlton was just now the most popular resident in all South Wennock. He had been selected by unanimous accord to take the chair at this very meeting, and had consented. Consented somewhat contrary to his usual line of conduct; for Mr. Carlton personally was of a retiring disposition, and wholly declined to be made much of, or to be brought prominently out. It was the first time he had consented to fill any public office whatever. He never would serve as poor-law guardian, or churchwarden, or parish overseer; coroner's mandates could not draw him on a jury; the stewardship at races, at public balls, had alike been thrust upon him, or was sought to be, all in vaiu. Mr. Carlton, in spite of the show and pomp of his home (and that perhaps was owing to his wife, more than to him), was a retiring man, and would not be drawn out. He could hardly have told why he had yielded now, and consented in this instance to take the chair at the dinner. Having done so, however, he did not shrink from its duties, and he was proving that incapacity was certainly not the cause of his repeated refusals, for never a better chairman graced a table. He sat at the head of the board, making his after-dinner speeches, giving out his toasts. His manner was genial, his whole heart seemed to be in his task, his usually impassive face was lighted up to gaiety. A good-looking man thus, with his well-formed features, his gentlemanly form. Some of the county people were at the table, nearly all the townsmen of note; one and all applauded him to the skies; and when the chairman's health was proposed, shouts rent the sir, and were taken up by the mob flattening its noses against the curtained windows outside: "The health of Mr. Carlton! Health and happiness to Mr. Carlton!" The clock was striking eleven when the chairman, flushed and heated, came forth. Perhaps none of those gentlemen had ever seen him flushed in their lives before; he was always to them a coldly impassive man, whom nothing could excite. It was not the wine that had done it now: Mr. Carlton, invariably abstemious in that respect, had taken as little as it was possible to take; but the unusual ovation paid to him had warmed his heart and flushed his brow. Several of the guests came out with him, but the greater portion were remaining longer; some of these had to ride home miles, the rest were hastening to their proximate homes. For the most part, they were slightly elated, for it had been a very convivial meeting; and they took a demonstrative leave of Mr. Carlton, nearly shaking his hands off, and vowing he was a rare good fellow and must be their chairman always. The crowd of eaves-droppers-ever swayed by the popular feeling of the hour, ever excitablewound up with a cheer for Mr. Carlton by way of chorus. He walked along the street towards his home, the cheer echoing in his ears. Such moments had not been frequent in Mr. Carlton's life, and he was a little lifted out of his ordinary self. It was a warm night in that genial season hovering between summer and autumn, and Mr. Carlton raised his hat and bared his brow to the cool night air, as he glanced at the starry canopy of heaven. Whatever cares he might have had, whatever sources of trouble or anxiety-and whether he had any or not was best known to himself; but few of us are without some secret skeleton that I wish him we have to keep sacred from the world, how-speed him on, myself, if I could. ever innocent in itself it may be-were all right well anywhere but in South Wennock— cast to the winds. Mr. Carlton forgot the past and that he'll never come back to. But I hate and the present in the future; and certain his son. I should like to wring his neck. So vague aspirings lying at the bottom of his long, however, as the insolent jackanapes heart were allowed to take a more tangible behaves himself and does not cross my path— form than they had ever taken before. When why, who are you?" the spirit is excited it imbues things with its own hues they are apt to be very brilliant ones. "I seem like a god to them," he laughed, alluding to the extravagant homage recently paid him by the townsfolk. "Jove on Olympus never had a warmer ovation. I have become what I never intended-a man of note in ; the place. Any foolish charge against me -psha! they'd buffet the fellow bringing it. Nevertheless, I shall leave you to your sorrow, my good natives of South Wennock and I know not why I have stopped with you so long. For how many years have I said to myself at waking, morning after morning, that another month should see me take my farewell of the place! and here I am still. Is it, that some invisible chain binds me to it-a chain that I cannot break? Why else do I stop? Or is it that some latent voice of caution-tush! I don't care for those thoughts to-night." He broke off, rubbed his brow with his cambric handkerchief, nodded a salutation in response to one given him by a passer-by, and resumed his musings. "My talents were not made to be hid under a bushel—and what else is it; a general practitioner in a paltry country town! I came here but as a stepping-stone, never intending to remain; and but for circumstances, to which we are all obliged to be slaves, I should not have remained. I think I have been a fool to stop so long, but I'll leave it now. London is the field for me, and I shall go to it and take my degree. My reputation will follow me; I shall make use of these county aristocrats to recommend me; I shall try for her Majesty's knightly sword upon my shoulder-Rise up, Sir Lewis.' I may be enrolled, in time, amidst the baronetage of the United Kingdom, and then my lady cannot carp at inequality of rank. A proud set, the Chesneys, and my wife the proudest. Yes, I will remove to London, and I may get on to the very highest rank permitted to men of physic. May get on! I will get on; for Lewis Carlton to will a thing is to do it. Look at Stephen Grey! was there ever such luck in this world? And if he could go triumphantly on, as he has done, without influential friends to back him, what may I not look to do? I am not sorry that luck has attended Stephen; nay, I am glad that it should be so. I have no enmity to him; I'd The last question was addressed to a female, and an exceedingly broad female, who stood in the shade of Mr. Carlton's gate, dropping curtsies, just as he was about to turn into it. "If it wasn't for the night, sir, you'd know me well enough," was the response. "Pepperfly, at your service, sir." Oh, Nurse Pepperfly," returned the surgeon, blandly; for somehow he always was bland to Mrs. Pepperfly. "You should stand further forward, and let your good-looking face be seen." 66 Well, now, you will have your joke, sir, remarked the nurse. "Says I to the folks wherever I goes, 'If you want a pleasant, safe, good-hearted gentleman, as can bring you through this vale of sicknesses, just you send for Doctor Carlton.' And I am only proud, sir, when I happens to be in conjunction with you, that's all; which is not the happy case to-night, though I'm here, sir, to ask you to pay a visit perfessionally." "Where to?" asked Mr. Carlton. case is it?" "What "It's not a case of life and death, where you need run your legs off in a race again time,” luminously proceeded Mrs. Pepperfly. "Whether you goes to-morrow morning, or whether you goes to-morrow a'ternoon, it'll come to the same, sir, as may be agreeable." "But where's it to?" repeated Mr. Carlton, for the lady had stopped. "It's where I've been a-staying, sir, for the last few days; a private visit I've been on, and not perfessional, and she's Mrs. Smith. I'm fetched out to-night, sir, to Mrs. Knagg, Knagg's wife the broker's, and Mrs. Smith says to 'Call in at Dr. Carlton's as you me, passes, and make my dooty to him, and say I've heered of his skill, and ask him to step in at his leisure to-morrow to prescribe for my child'—which a white swelling it is in its knee, sir, and t'other in the grave, as may be said, for 'twont be long out of it; and me the last few days as I've been there, a worrying of her to let me come for Dr. Carlton." There were sundry embellishments in the above speech, which, in strict regard to truth, might have been omitted. Mr. Carlton, a shrewd man, took them for as much as they were worth. The name Smith had suggested to him but one woman of that name as likely to have had the lady before him on a visit. |