The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

EGYPT UNDER MEHEMET ALI, by Prince
PUCKLER MUSKAU. Vol. I. London: Henry

Co/barn.

This German Prince attracted some notice in this
country a few years age, partly from the freedom of
his remarks on English manners, and partly from the
rambling and eccentric manner in which he related
what he saw. His travels in Egypt bear the same
stamp. They are full of gossip and anecdote, and
egotism, but we excuse them all for the very exten-
sive insight which he has given into the character of
the great man who now rules that land so celebrated
in the history of nations, and for reports of
the numerous conversations between them rela-
tive to the Pasha's system of policy, and the
reforms which have marked his government.
They are of the manner of Boswell and O'Meara,
and are possibly as faithful, for we can hardly be-
lieve that a man who had been admitted into such
intimacy with his host would have given imaginary
details or distorted facts. It is true that most of
them are favourable to Mehemet Ali, but still
there is a point in the expressions, and proofs
of deep schemes and enlarged views, which go far to
establish their authenticity. Among the first inter-
views which the Prince had with the Pacha he took
occasion to mention the extraordinary improvements
which had taken place in Egypt under his sway.
" Well,' repled Mehemet Ali, I will not deny
that something more than common has been dote here,
and I have certainly endeavoured to follow the examples
of great men, as far as it was in my power. It is certain
too, that I can now continue the work with less anxiety.
I am no longer quite alone as I was before ; people begin
to understand me ; the machinery is at work ; and my
grandchildren, not my children, will be able to reap
what I have sown. Where such :infinite confusion pre-
vailed as here, where there was such a complete dissolu-
tion of all sound political relations, and among a people
so entirely barbarous, ignorant, and incapable of all use-
ful labour, civilisation can revive but slowly. Yon know
that Egypt was once the first land in the world—an ex-
ample to all others. Now, it is the turn of Europe. In
time, perhaps, enlightenment may again have its seat
here. Everything, in the world is in a constant state of
vacillation.' (This is a favourite expression of the
Pasha.)"
Among the institutions the Viceroy has established
is a hospital for vaccination, but so reluctant are the
people, as in fact they were once in this country, to
the change, that the parents are to be bribed, and the
Government pays one piastre for every child which is
vaccinated. " I have always been compelled," said the
Viceroy, " either to force the people, or to pay them,
for their good." In adverting to other prejudices,
and excusing himself for not making more rapid
changes, he said " the times will not permit me to
go so far as you would wish. After my death, many
more prejudices will give way, though I must con-
fess that it is immensely difficult for even the wisest
man to free himself from them ; and perhaps it is
impossible for any mortal ever entirely to shake off
the bias of his early education. The remainder of
the conversation is too good to be abridged :
" I sincerely complimented him that he had, neverthe-
less, already been able to conquer so many prejudices ;
and remarked, how grateful the present generation
ought to be to him, for the unspeakable benefits which
he had conferred upon it. There was a sincerity and
originality in his reply which manifested his intimate
knowledge of the human heart. A father,' said he,
loves his child—wherefore ? from selfishness ; he sees
a prolongation of himself in that child ; it claims its
origin from him ; it belongs to him ; and he hopes that
it will one day be the prop of his old age. A child loves
his father because it receives support, and every good
thing it possesses from him, and expects on his decease
to inherit his property. Master and servant, prince and
subject, all are actuated by these motives ; self-interest
lies at the root of all human relations ; and if it is skill-
fully
managed, it constitutes good masters and good
servants.'

" 6 It is a pity, however,' I exclaimed, ' that so few
men understand their real interest ; and in this respect I
greatly admire the energy of your Highness, who is de-
terred neither by deceit nor stupidity its the prosecution
of your benevolent plans.'
" It is true,' replied he, I have to overcome many a
severe struggle ; and, perhaps, for this very reason, I
have become more closely and ardently devoted to my
adopted land. I had neither rest nor peace ; Egypt ap-
peared to me like a poor, naked, helpless child, which
for centuries had been stupified with sleep, to whom I
was now to be everything,—its father and mother, its
master and servant, its teacher and judge ; and often,
when lying sleepless on my couch, have I said within
myself :—Can a single Mehemet Ali be sufficient to rear,
to clothe, to instruct, and to train this child ? Even now
I feel dubious of success ; yet, perhaps, in spite of every
obstacle, it may be accorded to me by God, to whom I
owe so much, and to whom I have always applied for
direction."

In the work will be found a memoir, drawn up by
a M. Besson, relative to the means which he possessed
of saving Napoleon from imprisonment, by eluding
the British cruisers oft' Rochefort, after the battle of
Waterloo. This Frenchman held some situation in
Egypt, and having formed a friendship with the
author had entrusted to him the memoir. But little
confidence, however, can be placed in his statements
when we find that he attributes the failure of his plan
to the " petty Camarillo, by whom the Emperor was
surrounded at Rochefort," meaning thereby Bertrand,
Las Casas, Montholon, and others, the most devoted
to his safety and honour.
We may mention that the work is translated from
the German original, which consists of three volumes,
and will be comprised in two English. One volume
only has yet appeared, but the other may be expected
shortly.

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER

DIFFICULTIES.

Vol. 111.

Mr. Knight has just brought out the third and
last volume of this new edition, which has been re-
vised and corrected by the author, and contains bio-
graphical sketches of the most remarkable men raised
to eminence during the latter end of the last century
and the beginning of the present, by their own ex-
ertions. Among these are Watt, Dollond, Herschel,
and Arkwright—names which will go down to the
latest posterity, because they are associated with the
most important discoveries of the present age in
optics, astronomy, and that great element of British
power—the steam-engine. It includes also the lives
of many eminent painters, sculptors, and poets, illus-
trated by anecdotes collected from the best sources.
The work is published at a very moderate price, and
is adorned with portraits more remarkable for their
strict likeness to the original paintings, than their
execution.

NAVAL AND MILITARY SKETCH-BOOK

Pali. I.

This is the first part of a cheap weekly periodical,
devoted to the record of the achievements of the
United Services. It is well got up, is profusely illus-
trated with wood-cuts, and will no doubt be a great
favourite in all ship's and regimental libraries.

THE EDINBURGH TALES. Conducted by
Mrs. JOHNSTONE. Part I.
This is a new undertaking, to which we heartily
wish success. There can be very few readers who do
not owe some hours of pleasant entertainment to the
pen of the authoress of Violet Hamilton and Blanche
Delamere. She is as clever as Mrs. Gore, and not as
flippant or as heartless; she can produce strong
effects without degenerating into coarseness, like
Mrs. Trollope. A collection of tales, then, from her
pen, is a perfect acquisition. The first part of the
present work, under the title of " The Experiences of
Richard Taylor, Esq.," contains " Young Mrs. Ro-
berts's Three Christmas Dinners, Mary Anne's Hair,"
and the commencement of " Governor Fox." Per-
haps some of our readers may be curious to know
who Richard Taylor, Esq., was—we are happy, by
the aid of the Authoress, to be so well able to gratify
them
:
"There must be manypersons in London, particularly
in the busy neighbourhood extending from St. Paul's
churchyard to Charing-cross, perfectly familiar with Mr.
Richard Taylor. His burrow, or central point, was in
some lane, small street, or alley, between Arundel-street
and Surrey-stairs, whence he daily revolved in an orbit,
of which no man could trace its eccentricity. Its extre-
mities seemed to be Gray's Inn on the north, the Obe-
lisk on the south, the London Docks on the vulgar side,
and Hyde Park-corner on the point of gentility. It was
next to impossible, any day from eleven till two o'clock,
between the years 1815 and 1832, to walk from Pall-
mall to St. Paul's, without once, if not oftener, encoun-
tering The Gentleman with the Umbrella.' There he
emerged from Chancery-lane, and here he popped upon
you from Temple-lane ; you saw him glide down Nor-
folk-street, or lost sight of him, all at once, about Drury-
lane ; or beheld him holding on briskly, but without
effort, along the Strand, till, about Charing-cross, he
suddenly disappeared to start upon you, like Will-o'-the-
Wisp, in some unexpectec corner. Now was he seen in
the Chancery Court—now sauntering towards Billings-
gate-market—now at the Stock Exchange, and again at
the Bow-street office. He might, in the same hour, be
seen at the hustings in Palace-yard, and hovering on the
outskirts of one of Orator Hunt's meetings, as far off as
Spa-fields ; at a reasonable hour in the gallery of the
House of Commons, and next in Mr. Edward Irving's
chapel. The British Museum divided his favour with
the great butcher markets, and with the picture and
book auctions, which he regularly frequented. The best
idea may be firmed of the movements of Mr. Richard
Taylor, from the different notions formed of his charac-
ter and calling. For the first five years of his sojourning
in London, many conjectures were formed concerning
this Gentlemaa about town,' or The Gentleman with
the Umbrella;' by which descriptive appellation he came
to be pretty generally known among the shopmen and
clerks along his line of quick-march. His costume and
appearance, strange as die association seems, was half
military, half Moravian. By many he was set down as
a reporter for the daily prints—vulgarly a penny-a-liner;
a calling universally sneered at by those whose figments
and marvels are paid from twopence a line upwards.
His frequent attendance at the police •offices and the
courts of law favoured this conjecture, as well as his
occasional appearance at places of public amusement. A
sagacious tradesman in Cockspur-street, a reformer who
had been involved in the troubles' of the times of Hardy
and Horne Tooke, set him down as a half-pay officer,
now a spy of the Home-office. A tavern-keeper in Fleet-
street, who had seen him at the Bow-street office volun-

tarily step forward to interpret for a Polish Jew, against
whom law was going bard from ignorance of the
Cockney dialect of the English language, affirmed that
he was a Polish refugee. But he had also been
heard to interpret for an itinerant weather-glass
seller from the Lake of Como in a similar scrape ;
and for a Turkish seaman who, having first been robbed,
was next to be sent to prison for not consenting to be
twice robbed—of his time and his money—in prosecuting
the thief. These things rather told in his favour. One
day the editor of a well-known liberal paper was seen to
stop The Gentleman with the Umbrella,' and carry
him into a large bookseller's shop; and on another he
was discovered in a hackney coach with some benevolent
Quakers from America, who had been looking on the
seamy side of civilisation in Newgate. Here was corro-
boration of good character. Of The Gentleman with
the Umbrella,' we may tell farther, that his sister-in-
law, Mrs. James Taylor, the wife of the rich solicitor in
Brunswick-square, affectionately named him, among her
friends, our excellent and tram tunate brother, Mr.
Richard;' her husband, familiarly, • our poor Dick;' a
young Templar, studying German, quaintly called him
Mephistophiles ;' and Mary Ann Moir, his god-
daughter, emphatically, ' Good Genius.'
"It was, however, as The Gentleman with the
Umbrella' that Mr. Richard Taylor was best known;
for this was his name with the multitude, the many poor
women and children of whom he was the daily speaking
acquaintance, and with two-thirds of the men. He was,
indeed, lavish of his acquaintanceship, but as chary of
his intimacy. His circle took in both extremes
of society, and and all that lay between them. On the
same morning he might have been seen leaning on the
cane of the neatly rolled up brown silk umbrella, fixed
with its mother-of-pearl button, talking with the richest
merchants leaving the Exchange, or conversing with an
Irish market-woman, or an old Jew clothesman. Such
was the street status of Mr. Richard Taylor, when Peace
sent the hero of Waterloo to perambulate the pavement
of London; and, in his Grace, the people of Mr. Richard's
beat discovered, to his great annoyance, the double of
their Gentleman with the Umbrella.' In the height,
and the general outline of the figure, the compactness
of the person, the alacrity and firmness of movement,
and also in the length of the countenance, there might
be some slight resemblance, as well as in the plainness,
accuracy, and (a certain style established) the unpre-
tending neatness of the dress. But the main feature
was assuredly the umbrella; with something perhaps of
that cast of countenance which Richard himself called
the mock-heroic, and which he had but narrowly escaped,
while he thought it more fully developed in the more
aristocratic nose of his double. Any one who had seen
these alleged counterparts without their hats would have
been on the instant dispossessed of this ideal resem-
blance. Even young ladies allswed that Mr. Richard
Taylor, without his hat, was a quite other thing. And
Mary Anne, whose glory was her beautiful and redundant
golden tresses, then looked with genuine admiration on
the superb development of brain displayed in
The bald polish of the honoured head
of her godfather; and in his deep-sunk, dark eyes, grey
and lucid, saw gatherings of meanings, and signs of
thoughts, which do not often visit the minds of heroes.
This alleged, or imaginary resemblance, was, we have
said, exceedingly annoying to Mr. Richard Taylor, who
forthwith became for some months a small lion; or, what
is more teasing, the reflection of a great lion, and a re-
gular spectacle to holiday folks and country cousins. To
crown his chagrin, some shabby artist, who had better
opportunities of seeing him than his Grace of Wel-
lington, actually sketched him en hero; and, at the small
cost of a few frogs and a stiff stock, posted him in several
print-shops as the true lion of Waterloo. This was the
more provoking to our hero, as, if there was one set of
men whom he detested more than another, it was heroes.
He had suffered by them, and seen others suffer; they
were but instruments, it is true; but he said ' One does
not like the gallows any more than the hangman.' "