The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-30

the SuOGbSlBuIeu ana weak men AROUND nun
he will assuredly lose his popularity, and the
American people may forget his war services
in the failure of his administration.
NILE NOTES OF A DONKEY.
From the NJ y World.
The HCTdJd a few days since invited its
readers to peruse and admire the contribu-
tions of its Egyptian correspondent. We
have read some of them. They are GER
tainly very surprising productions, and, if
they do not quite Justify the exultation with
which the editor refers to them, they deserve
a wider circulation than the HoTdLd is able TO
give them. They are little too sublime for
everyday reading; they contain too much elo-
quence to the square inch; and ought to be
printed in brief instalments IN order to
guard the reader against intellectual rupture.
Egypt seems to have rendered to the writer
the stimulating conserves of her ancients; he
has eaten of the insane mummy that takes the
reason prisoner; Cheops hath been measured
to him for drugs he has tasted of Chamnes
in electuaries and consumed Amosis IN pills.
How else can his rampageous rhetoric be ac-
counted for? When Coleridge was unusually
gorgeous of speech il was known that he had
fired his imagination with opium. AS the
correspondent steals a grace beyond the
reach of art, it is evident that he has been
nourishing his faculties upon mummy, the
Astrampsychus and Radzivil and Junkenius.
and even Lord Bacon. But truce to eulogy
and conjecture. Let us usher this eloquent
being before the reader, and allow him to un-
fold his blazonries of speech. ''From sudden
sunrise to quick sunset, he says, speaking of
the Nile, ''the tourist goes through many
worlds and phases of thought. The silence
fast impresses him as he glides along undis-
turbed in contemplation either of the banks
Oh n. a Z IL.
stupendous piled rocks and sand-hills,
or the desert, or the park and garden
green which contrast against hoary old
age by patches How hc whoever he
is, could remain undisturbed through such
a range of contemplation is a mystery. But
if the garden green contrasting against hoary
old age by patches failed to move him, the
sounds and visions described in the ensuing
sentence would, we should think, stir him,
even if he were as stolid and immovable as
the sphinx. The pelican he says ''daps
his wings tie ,jdckaJ 1riirig d50yc a huge fish
gulps and staltles one, a partridge or quail
rises, and all along that bouudless calm
yearning to know more of the hidden past"
This is the finest writing we ever saw or
heard of, but it seems 'to be in patches
deficient in the element of probability Hero
dotus went to Egypt, and has told us some
rather indigestible stories about what he saw
there. But he nowhere mentions the soaring
iackal. We have instructed our Moonshee
to look up the jaclial subject. from Pliny
to Professor Owen, and he has done so
with diligence. But there is nowhere
any account OF the flying variety. One,
it is true, occasionally hears of a shower of
frogs OF pilchards, and the Esquimaux have
a tradition that it once showed walruGes that
beloved as they fell; and we believe that
there is Siamese legend Of a shower of ele-
plants. So that the correspondents tale of a
cloud of jaclals, though rather trying to the
credullty, does not seem absolutely impossi-
bic. Before rejecting it altogether, we shall
await further testimony on the subject. The
writer descends gracefully from the aerial
jackal, and speaks very generously of the
river. when night has succeeded day. he
says, nowhere can moonlight be what it is
on the Nile" As a statement of fact this is
of course, not to be disputed, and, as a
phrase, it is as much above criticism rs the
jackals were above the head of the writer
We are embarrassed by the riches to which
the Herdtd has SO eXultingly drawn our atten-
ton. The verbal grace and melody are suf-
tcienty overpowering but they also un-
fold romantic tales as sunny as those of
BOccacciO. The central figure of these ro-
mances IS an anonymous maiden of mystic
rious purposes and character who seems a
cross between banshee and lunatic and
who goes through q series of the most mar
vellous adventures She takes tho CORE
spondent into her confidence, and allows him
to look after her baggage. She converses in
differently with camel drivers and kings, is
sometimes seen upon the dizzy summit of a
donkey, and sometimes observed, in postures
of mystery and partial dislocation, at balls and
festivals. She flickers through the hurly-burly
attendant upon the fetes of De Lesseps like a
stage fairy through the turmoil of gnomes and
| goblins in the pantomime. Through the aid
Of this extraordinary person, the correspond
| ent is brought into occasional propinquity to
royal and sacred persons He looks upon the
whiskers Of the Emperor of Austria and upon
the boots of the Prince of Prussia, and says
that the complexion of the Empress is built
upon a basis of rice powder He scrutinizes
the effulgent Viceroy, and that fat potentate
returns his gaze of admiration. Finally, the
! whole romance breaks into sputter of inn
! possible counts and aide-de-camps and Arabs,
as a comparatively sedate frework, Just be-
! fore its extinction, blaZes into an ineXpli-
! cable wbirling chaos of flames: and cores
! pondent, anonymous female, flying jackals
and soyereigns wayer into q murky mist oi
words and disappear.
If we had not been allured by urgent edi
torial solicitation, we should not have looked
for any good writing in the He,ald. We
should as soon have thought of looking il
the Septuagint for pun, or in the Apocry
pha for a conundrum. 1t is pleasure to bc
able to commend the ability and enterprise
exhibited by a contemporary, particularly
when the opportunities of doing so without
sacrificing truth to courtesy are so exceed
ingly intrequent; and we have the deepes
satisfaction in felicitating our neighbor upoI
its Egyptian correspondent.
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