lated, and shone brilliantly and triumphantly. He gazed at Vallier for a moment, and then, reaching out his nervous hand, drew him inside.

"I am glad you have come," he said, in an eager whisper. "You lent me money; I haven't forgotten that, and you shall be repaid tenfold. It is finished at last, and just in time—just in time. Cone, I am all ready. You helped to complete it, and you shall share the triumph. Come." He drew Vallier, mystified and startled, into the study, and shut the door carefully. The scanty furniture was thrust back against the walls, leaving the room clear. Before the sofa, at the side of the room, stood an instrument of marvelous workmanship. It consisted of something like a camera-obscura, in conjunction with other intricate apparatus, among which could be seen receptacles of glass containing strange liquids.

This mysterious mechanism received but a glance from Vallier; his eyes were fixed on a still figure placed in a sitting position on the sofa, and entirely covered with a white sheet, which dimly showed the outlines of the human form. Vallier gazed on this awful figure, and almost dropped to the floor, so weak was he with superstitious terror.

"It is Irene," murmured the Doctor. "Irene!" gasped Vallier, in a horrorstricken whisper.

"My wife-yes," sighed Godsmark, "she died suddenly tonight."

devil, appears to him or her in tangible shape, and the frail mortal existence, blasted by the awful sight, suddenly perishes. Does it not blind our eyes to gaze at the sun? Is it not written that he must die who hath looked upon a God? Mortal eyes stricken by such a sight must retain the impression of it after death; it must be stamped indelibly upon the retina. This instrument, placed before the open eyes of one who has perished suddenly by such a fearful visitation, will take from the seared retina the exact figure of the immortal visitant, and by means of these intricate arrangements and sensitive fluids will throw it with at least a slight semblance of its supernatural splendor upon that thin disk of prepared metal which you see."

Vallier could scarcely credit his senses, and almost believed himself the victim of some hideous dream.

"I am too impatient now to explain the mechanism to you," continued the Doctor, "but I will do so soon. I will light these powerful lamps. Now I will uncover-her face; and soon on yonder disk will shine the figure of that angelic being whose appearance has released her from this weary life."

Godsmark was stepping towards the still figure, when Vallier clutched his arm.

"If it kills them," he whispered, trembling, "shall we not—also die—at the—at the-sight of it ? "

"It is not likely-it is not likely," said the Doctor, impatiently. "We need not think Behold!" He stepped forward, and drew the sheet from the white face of the corpse. Its eyes were open, staring and expressionless.

There was an awful hush. The very walls seemed to watch. The two men heard their hearts beat.

There were other noises about the house, but they did not hear them. A minute passed by like an age. No wondrous figure flashed out upon the darkened disk. Suddenly the features of the corpse seemed to twitch-its eyes to dilate with horror. There was a movement! It rose slowly in its white garments with a low moan as of agony.

Irene," she whispered, gazing straight be

seductive enticements of Homburg, in its palmy gambling days. He became so devoted an attendant at the green tables that his great fortune took to itself wings, or rather was raked in by imperturbable croupiers. Then, beginning to feel the cold breath of the world, no longer ameliorated by passing through a medium of wealth, he quaffed a Lethean draught, and luxuriously slept his life away on a velvet couch in one of the magnificent saloons of the Kursaal.

Arthur emerged from prison a grave and saddened youth. Remembering tenderly

poor Irene's ambition for him, he devoted himself to his studies, and is now a promi nent judge in an eastern city.

Urquhart distinguished himself in the army. He went to the seat of war in the East, and became a captain of volunteers. Both as a soldier and an officer he was renowned for the most splendid bravery, and for his utter contempt of danger and death. He was torn to pieces by the explosion of a shell in almost the last battle of the war, and every one who knew him grieved deeply for him.

C. E. B.

If there is anything more puzzling to the student than ancient Egypt, it is certainly modern Egypt. The mysteries which cling about ancient Egypt are, it is true, absent from modern; yet the emotions it excites are so varied and contradictory, the change from its busy cities to the silence of its deserts so sudden and appalling, that it seems as difficult to give a consistent account of the Egypt of today, as to reconcile all the conflicting theories concerning the worship of Osiris, or the government of the Pharaohs. Indeed, south of Cairo there is no such thing as modern Egypt, for there the past creeps out from between ruined portals, and engulfs all the little present in its colossal shadow. It is in Cairo and Alexandria that the life of today must be studied-a life so prodigal of riches and of squalor, of picturesqueness and of filth, a character so composed of sullen patience and childish light-heartedness, that it is impossible to write of either without seeming contradiction.

The written history of Egypt begins when her freedom as a nation was first irrevocably crushed under a conquering foot. The annals of the world contain no sadder story than this, of the downfall of the earliest among civilized nations. Persians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans, succeeded each other in the work of destruction; but the

land retained something of its Pharaonic splendor, until the Saracens set foot upon its soil. While the Byzantine Emperors were striving to forcibly Christianize Egypt; while the last followers of the old faith were seeking shelter in the sacred groves of Philæ; when the glory of Alexandria was beginning to wane, and the ruins of the Serapeum were already moss-grown- there was born at Mecca a child whose future was to change the fate of half the known world. He was the descendant of a rich and powerful family, to whom belonged the honorable office of Keepers of the Caäba. His father, Abdallah, was so remarkably handsome, that it is said that at his marriage two hundred maidens died of broken hearts. Many miracles are related concerning the birth of his son Mahomet; but it was not until he reached the age of forty, that he proclaimed his mission as a prophet. There is no life or character in history stranger than that of Mahomet. Shrewd, yet passionate; brave and determined, yet subject to terrible mental depression; a bitter enemy of idols, yet born an idolator; superstitious, sensuous, proud and cruel, this man gathered about him, first a little band of half-doubting believers, then an army which by the sword was to force the Prophet's creed upon half the world. Yet this cruel man, who could

neither read nor write, has left recorded in his Koran precepts of such justice and beauty as to astonish the Christian reader. So firmly did Mahomet establish his faith, that it did not die with him, but under his successors spread far and wide. He had but lately ceased to live, when his followers under Amron conquered Persia, Syria, and Egypt. To the greatest stronghold of idolatry came these destroyers of idols, and found that Christian hands had already laid waste the shrines of Isis and Osiris. Once more the religion of the land was changed by force, and its seed watered with blood.

Here it may be said that the history of modern Egypt begins. When the Saracen army under Amron entered Alexandria, on Dec. 22d, 640, the captor wrote to the Caliph :

"I have taken the great city of the West. It is impossible for me to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty, and I shall content myself with observing that it contains four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theaters, or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and forty thousand tributary Jews." Later, the conqueror sent the Caliph the following graphic account of the land he had been at such pains to gain possession of:

"Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized mountain and a red sand. The distance from Tyene to the sea is a month's journey for a horseman. Along the valley descends a river, upon which the blessing of the

Most High reposes both morning and evening, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt; the fields are

overspread by the salutary flood, and the villages communicate with each other in their painted barks.

.. According to the changes of the season, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden

harvest."

This apt and concise description is as applicable to Egypt today as when the triumphant Amron penned it.

Not content to occupy the glories of Alexandria, he moved his army above the Delta, and founded the new capital

of El Cahireh, "the victorious." The Saracens had no respect for the civilizations which preceded them. Iconoclasts by religion, they considered the art of sculpture a crime; intolerant of all beliefs but their own, they found heathen temples an abomination in their sight; profoundly ignorant of literature, they held books in no regard. When Amron appealed to the Caliph Omar, to know what should be done with the magnificent library in Alexandria, he received, according to the well-known story, the following reply: "The books you mention are either in conformity with the Book of God, or they are not. If they are, the Koran is sufficient without them; if they are not, they ought to be destroyed." It is said that the zealous Amron distributed them to the keepers of the baths, to whom they served as fuel for six months.

Nowhere can the fable of the phoenix be more aptly applied than to Cairo, for it literally rose out of the ashes of the ancient kingdom. The palaces of Alexandria were robbed of all their treasures to deck its walls; the temples were torn stone from stone to pave its streets and build its flat-roofed houses. Four hundred Greek columns adorn a single mosque; another has a slab, carved over with the praises of Tutmes, sawn in two to form a door-step. The remains of Memphis were so entirely absorbed into the new city, that a single colossal statue is alone left to mark the ancient city's site. Scarcely a house, or wall, or street, in the older Cairo, but bears witness to the ruthless depredations of the Saracen invaders. The architecture which rose from these fragments was, like the people whose will called it to life, a sort of adaptation of the material at hand. The Saracens, as a nation, seem a strange ac cident of history. Rising as suddenly and mysteriously as a summer flood, they swept over nation after nation, taking to themselves the customs of one, the industries of another, the arts of a third, modifying and adapting them to their needs, only stamping upon each their own characteristic. They went forth with nothing their own except a creed. By conquest and absorption they became