a store of the argols for fuel. It will be seen, | arrested, and employed some of the gentle therefore, that we were quite on the level of Thibetian civilization."

In Lha-Ssa, as elsewhere, the Frenchmen were received with civility by the Buddhist priests. On one occasion apartments were assigned to them inside a convent of Lamas, they were listened to with attention and respect, and called the Lamas of Jehovah. Whether this portended, as they supposed, the great success that was to crown their missionary labors, is a point that cannot now be decided, as their residence at Lha-Ssa was brought to a premature conclusion by the interference of the Chinese Ambassador, who insisted on their being sent out of the country.

methods frequently practised in China in such cases, such as ordering long needles to be driven under the nails of the deposed king; and by these means the Chinese authorities declared "truth was separated from error, and the conduct of Nomekhan was made manifest to open day." The government of Thibet, at the arrival of the French missionaries, was administered by a regent, as both the existing Talé Lama and the Nomekhan were infants; but though this functionary appeared himself to be extremely well-disposed towards them, he was compelled to yield to the Chinese, and desire their departure from his capital. They were sent back to China at the cost of the Emperor, and ordered to submit to a solemn The Chinese influence is at all times great trial before the great mandarins of the Cein Thibet, and at the time of M. Huc's arri- lestial Empire. For what took place on this val, recent events had increased its strength. occasion, as well as for a more detailed acThe government of Thibet is, as is known, count of the interior of China, which he has theocratic. The Talé Lama (usually written had such rare opportunities of becoming acDalai-Lama), is the political and religious quainted with, we are referred to a future sovereign of all the countries of Thibet. In work, to be written in the intervals of the his hands resides all power-legislative, exe- missionary labors in Mongol-Tartary, to which cutive, and administrative; and he is not con- the author has returned. We shall look for trolled in its exercise by any inconvenient its appearance with considerable interest, as charter or constitution, being regarded as the notwithstanding a certain bias of opinion, and living Buddha, or actual embodiment of the a tendency to credulity, inseparable, perhaps, divinity on earth. But as, nevertheless, it from his position, his powers, both of obserwill sometimes happen that he dies, or in the vation and description, are sufficient, in comlanguage of the Buddhists, that he is pleased bination with the freshness of the material, to to transmigrate, it is necessary for the great produce an acceptable and valuable book. assembly of Lamas to point out from time to We may not be disposed to admit as readitime the child in whose form any Talé Lamaly as he does the probability, for instance, of has thought proper to revive, as well as to elect a Nomekhan, or lay sovereign, who is to attend to affairs beneath the living Buddha's dignity to interfere in. In the year 1844, it happened that the Talé Lamas had taken to transmigrating with such extraordinary rapidity, that the inhabitants of LhaSsa were seized with consternation. Three Talé Lamas had disappeared in rapid succession, and whispers went abroad, that they had been assisted to effect their transmigration by poison, strangling, and other mere mortal methods. The Superior Lama of one of the great Lama Convents, who was known to have been much devoted to the last, died also at the same time. Public opinion pointed to the Nomekhan, and to his jealousy of the Talé Lama's authority, as the source of these untoward events; and the ministers applied to the Court of Pekin to use its influence for the protection of the newly made divinity. An ambassador, Ki-chan, was sent to Thibet; he caused the Nomekhan to be

a certain Lama of Thibet being able to rip himself open with a knife whenever he pleases and close the wound by merely passing his hand over it, accounting for the fact simply by the agency of the devil. On such matters as these, we will agree to differ, and follow, with no less pleasure, the narrative, of whose perfect good faith we see no reason to doubt. In the whole history of the Church of Rome, there is nothing on which the eye can rest with so little alloy to its satisfaction as on that of the wanderings and labors of her missionaries. The humble sons of that Church are the leaven" that leaveneth the whole lump." Their poverty and simplicity have, in some measure, atoned for the pride and luxury of Popes and Cardinals; and it is to such narratives as these we turn when we would know how it happens that a vessel, in many parts so rotten, and so long since declared unseaworthy, and about to founder, has yet outlived the storms of a thousand years. In considering the

From Sharpe's Magazine.

EGYPT UNDER ABBAS PASHA.

BY BAYLE ST. JOHN.

English merchant, who ought to have known the manners of the country, advised the construction of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal. It has been most useful to commerce; but twenty thousand people were starved or worked to death within six weeks, in order to complete it. Fifty illustrations of the same kind might be given; but we wish merely to have our meaning understood, when we say that if Abbas Pasha or his party ever contemplated, as there is reason to suppose they did, the utter destruction of foreign influence, the total change of a system, under which French and English measures alternated like whig and tory administrations, we must candidly admit, they had some very good grounds to go upon.

Well, there were plenty of people to succeed him. The pasha had a large family of children and grandchildren, to whom he had behaved sometimes with indulgence, but generally with unreasoning and perverse severity. There was scarcely a member of his family with whom he had not had many little quarrels, and who did not avoid his presence as they did the plague. Even the favorite Ibrahim could not bear to live in the same city as his presumed father; and the rest would have been little less startled by the last summons of all, than they were by an occasional order to appear in the presence of the angry and savage old man. One feeling, however, was pretty general amongst them; -they regarded the pasha as a wonderfully important personage, and themselves conse- The creation of the party was a long and quently, being his children, as little less won- laborious work very likely it was brought derful and important. Their hopes were in and kept together more by mutual disconthe uncertainty of life; and very many of them tents, ambitious hopes, and straightforward in their own minds had arranged what they bigotry, than by any very Machiavellian would do in case they came to be viceroy, policy. Probably Abbas Pasha really liked how they would make the money spin, and ram-fighting, and was a pigeon-fancier, and what mighty devices they would put in prac- did not assume these tastes as the elder tice, to emulate and surpass the splendors of Brutus played the fool, in order to accomplish "Effendina"-" Our Lord," par excellence. his ends. But, however this may be, he cerIt must be confessed that Abbas Pasha tainly occupied a more respectable position alone had the good sense to take up a posi- than his uncle Ibrahim, whose whole ideas tion of his own. Whether he was as crafty of the duties of government were getting and politic as some pretend before his eleva- money and playing at soldiers; and than any tion to power, it is difficult to decide; but the of the other members of this most obese and plan at that time generally ascribed to him, heavy-headed family. Even if it be true of forming what was called a Turkish or that he meditated a revolt against the brobigoted party, a party of discontented great ken-down conqueror of Syria, and was only folks and fanatical Ulemas,-a party which withheld by fear of the European powers, should appeal to the religious prejudices of this fact gives an impression of his energy, the good Caireens, and oppose itself to the and by no means derogates from his characinroad of European adventurers and improve- ter in this country. The Saids and the ments, this plan, if distinctly formed, was Ahmeds, the Ismains and the Mustacertainly a very sagacious one. Let us be phas, would each and all of them strike a frank Europeans have done more harm than blow and rid the country of their beloved regood in Egypt; that is to say, whenever they lations, if the little word impossible did not have appeared except as mere commercial stare them in the face. As it is, they are in men, bringing the goods of their own coun- perpetual feud with the head of the family, tries, and anxious to take away the surplus and there is no end to their bickerings, heartof the luxuriant crops of the valley of the Nile. burnings, jealousies and hatreds. Abbas is As political advisers, partly, perhaps, because haughty and overbearing to them; they as men undertook to advise who were fit only insolent as they may be to him. Be sure for the counting-house, partly because their that on all sides direful causes of affront have own interests were concerned, their intermed- been given; but probably Abbas has been dling has been most pernicious. Even the provoked by unbecoming pretensions. What benefits, for some such there are, which have else could be expected from a set of ignorant, been conferred by their wisdom, have been debauched adventurers, who have got a temmingled with an immense amount of misery.porary footing in the country, and actually There is one fact which has attained an al- talk with the pride of an ancient respectable most mythological dignity from its notoriety line of hereditary princes of their rights, and and the admirable manner in which it sym- their expectations, and their rank, and so bolizes European meddling in Egypt. An forth! Abbas of course has not the same

natural influence over this unruly brotherhood | true, by getting rid, in rather a hasty and as had the ruthless old man and his more shabby manner, of many Europeans, chiefly savage immediate successor, and probably, in English, in his employ; and showed a disposiattempting to exert his rightful authority, tion entirely to put a stop to that enormous has been betrayed into undignified squabbles. blunder of the Barrage. His first, and very It is certain that many members of his family wise impulse, was either to destroy the works have fled or retired to Constantinople; among altogether, or, abandoning them, simply alothers, Mohammed Ali Bey, and the notorious low the river to work its own majestic will. Nazlet Hanem. Some remarks have been But a clamor was raised on all sides! After made on this subject, to the effect that Abbas throwing so many millions of dollars into the is frightening away his dutiful relations by river, why should not a few millions more be his violent and unreasonable conduct; but if thrown? I believe the French, who have Egypt never loses two of its natives whom it a fondness for this undertaking because it can worse spare than these, it will be fortunate. was suggested by or through Napoleon-(the Without further inquiry than into their char- Osiris of his day is parent of all wonderful inacter, one would be inclined to admire and ventions);-I believe, I say, that France respect the man who had quarreled with made it almost a national question; and so them. Mohammed Ali is a debauched, worth- this work, which already impedes the navigaless lad; and Madame Nazlet cannot have tion of one of the finest rivers in the world, justice done to her without details into which and which, if successful, would only achieve our pen is not at liberty to enter. an object that one quarter of the expense in the establishment of steam-engines at various points for raising water would effectually accomplish, is allowed to drag on slowly towards its conclusion. We must give Abbas credit for the courageous good sense which suggested to him that the first loss was the best; and yet we must not withhold from him some praise for yielding to the influence of friendly persuasion, and refraining from carrying out his own opinion, however well founded, when he was told that by doing so he would incur the risk of being accused of treason to his grandfather's fame. The old man had fondly believed that his Barrage would join the Pyramids that look down upon it in that restricted category of the "Wonders of the World,' and might well be supposed to lie uneasily in his grave if all the piles which he had caused to be driven, all the mighty walls, and piers, and arches, which he had caused to be raised with a disregard of expense and human labor worthy of Cheops, were allowed to sink and lie forgotten in the slimy bed of the Nile.

It is a sad thing, certainly, to view the breaking up of a large family; but it would be a sadder thing to witness vice unpunished, and harmony arising out of the reckless indulgence of unbridled passions. Abbas Pasha himself, if report speak true, has little in his private life to plead for lenity in judging of his public character. His taste leads him to the most trifling amusements. Just as of old, when he was the supposed head of a kind of Conservative Turkish party, when he was Governor of Cairo, and silently nourishing his ambitious schemes, he spends time and money in the undignified, though not inelegant, and certainly innocent occupation of a pigeonfancier. Near the new palace which he is building-(none of these Turkish princes seem to care about living where their fathers lived before them)-rises a magnificent square tower, entirely devoted to the lovely winged favorites of his Highness the Viceroy, who is reported to be quite learned in this department of natural history. Another of his tastes, for which Englishmen will have more sympathy, is for horses; and the public will remember his bold challenge to the Jockey Club. In what way he passes the remainder of his leisure hours we do not inquire; but we give him, in common with his relatives, the advantage of an excuse that has before been urged in their favor,-namely, that of an infamous education.

Abbas Pasha has not exactly carried out the views which were attributed to him before he reached his present elevation. He has not, for example, done all that his fanatical anti-Frank friends could expect in shaking off foreign influence. He began, it is

This was the first point on which it appeared that Abbas Pasha was not disposed to act up fully to his presumed plan of destroying European influence altogether; but on many other occasions he early showed a disposition to temporize between his prejudices and his interest. We cannot here enter into detail on matters of minor importance, but, coming down to a recent period, we may mention another instance of a similar nature. For many years before his death Mohammed Ali had held out hopes that he would construct, or allow to be constructed, a railway from Cairo to Suez. This was preeminently

Be these things as they may, it seems admitted on all hands that Abbas Pasha has now completely thrown overboard the party which he courted so assiduously as heir-apparent, and is seeking foreign, especially English, support. All this is fair enough, provided he does not fall into the old error of sacrificing the natives entirely to strangers, as did his great predecessor, and provided he do not allow himself to be persuaded by flatterers-and he has flatterers; what man in power has not ?-to engage in grand undertakings for the purpose of emulating the renown of the old Pharaohs. Egypt wants neither a resuscitation of old times, nor a hasty imitation of the new. She has to find out the form of its own civilization: and modern improvements, as they have been hitherto introduced, will only weigh her down into despair.

an English project-not likely to be unuseful | lordship opens his mouth, puts a finger in to the country at large, it is true, but calcu- instead, Lord Palmerston will bite pretty lated chiefly to promote the more expeditious sharply. and comfortable transit of passengers to and from India. The Pasha, however, deceived by an excess of cunning, really entertained no intention of performing his promise. With great want of sagacity, he confounded the proposed stations on the line of railway, which he might have held in his own hands if he chose, with the counters which he was told had formed the nuclei of the British power in India. He believed the English had some sinister designs upon his country, and were engaged in all sorts of schemes for introducing themselves into it. The same policy which made him refuse to deepen the entrance of the port of Alexandria lest a British fleet might come in, made him unwilling to throw a railway across the Desert of Suez, even if he kept the whole management in his own hands. The recommendations, he saw, came all from one country: the objections, nearly all, from another. France was opposed to the railway because it had another darling Napoleonian project in hand-namely, the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez, which was much talked of once, but which now nobody mentions but to laugh at. The difficulties of execution, immense as they were found to be by the Austrian commission, were not the most decisive objections. The real ones were contained in an answer to the very appropriate question: Cui bono? However, the railway was shelved for a time. It has lately come again upon the tapis; and although it is now proposed to lay down a line in the first instance between Alexandria and Cairo, to compensate for the water communication which M. Moujel is spoiling by his Barrage, yet there is every probability of proper extensions and branches being made in due time.

If, indeed, the project be really a serious one. Many say, in spite of the official manner in which the announcement has been made, that it is only a ruse, a piece of policy in order to propitiate English influence, and that as soon as certain manoeuvres shall have been successful or otherwise, nothing, more will be said about the railway. There is no answering for the diplomacy of Eastern courts; but this explanation seems a little too Machiavellian. I have no doubt the promise has been made, in part, because it is thought to be agreeable to the English; but I can hardly imagine Abbas Pasha is so foolish as not to know that if he coaxes Lord Palmerston with a sugar-plum, and when his

But it is said that Abbas Pasha has no views at all about the progress of the arts, and manufactures, and commerce; no thought of the amelioration of the country; but that in endeavoring to gain the good will of Europe, he wants to serve some ambitious projects of his own. There may be something in this. Not that it is probable he intends to play the old game over again and throw off the yoke of Stamboul; but there is certainly a very arduous struggle now carrying on, both by open and underhand means, between Egypt and the Porte. There is an infinity of points of difference between the vassal and his lord; but the gist of the matter is, that the former wishes to preserve all the privileges, to be treated with the same indulgence, to be left with the same freedom of action, as his grandfather: he wishes to remain, in fact, a vassal little more than in name, free to indulge any arbitrary whims; whilst the latter is attempting, with some reason,-with great reason indeed, but perhaps in too precipitate a manner, and actuated by feelings that resemble private grudge,-to reduce Egypt to the same subjection as the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

The discussion is a serious one, and much may be said on both sides; but it must be accorded at once in favor of the Porte, that the Viceroy of Egypt is not to be considered as an independent sovereign merely paying tribute to a superior power, but as an officer of the Empire. Certainly, he holds a distinguished position; and his case is an exceptional one; but very imprudent would be any