ALEXANDRIA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3489, 12 September 1882, Page 4

ALEXANDRIA.

The chief seaport of Egypt about which we hare lately heard so much, Alexandria, was once associated with the history of some of the most splendid names the world can boast. Its founder was no common man, but the greatest soldier and one of the greatest statesmen of the old world. Tyre, the magnificent mistress of all seas, had just fallen, crushed to the earth by Alexander the Great, with a vindictive rage unworthy of hi 3 genius, and crushed so completely that it has since remained no more than a fishing village to this day. A substitute was needed to receive the sea-borne traffic of the Eastern and Western worlds ; and in the year 332 B.C. the seaport of Alexandria, chosen on account of its central position for the purpose, and for its fine harbor, still possessing two safe anchorages, with a depth in each of about 27 feet at dead low water, was founded on a peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean in a north-westerly direction towards the rocky island of Pharos, then reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world. The city of Alexandria soon grew in size, and when Alexander died it became the splendid capital of the_ Ptolemy dynasty, a series of illustrious kings well worthy to be the successors of the departed Pharaohs who had ruled Egypt in ancient times. Especially were the Ptolemies great as patrons of art, philosophy, learning, and the sciences. Fortunately for them the immense wealth brought by the enormous trade of Alexandria, and the taxes levied on the population, which rose in number before the Christian era, according to Diodomus Siculus, to 600,000 persons, enabled them to make the royal city a grand attraction to all the best intellect of the time. The magnificent Museum they built was not only a glorious palace with spacious botanical and zoological gardens attached, but it was something better, it was a great school for all kinds of learning. Along marble colonnades lined with sphinxes and obelisks, numerous students passed to their banqueting saloon, private apartments, library, lecture hall, or theatre, where many great men whose names have survived to our times were professors and tutors. There Euclid, the profound and accurate geometrician, taught the principle of that exact science. Pure mathematics, which as Tsaac Barrow expresses it, " triumphs without pomp,compels without force, and rules absolutely without any loss of freedom, which does not privately over-reach a weak saith, but openly assaults an armed reason, obtains a total victory, and puts on inevitable chains.' To the Alexandrian Museum we owe it, in fact, therefore, that in our day we can calculate the orbits of the planets, reckon the approach of eclipses, and the mass of the sun 93,000,000 of miles away. Here at Alexandria Eratosthenes corrected the ancient history of his country, and Claudius Ptolemy and Hipparchus, its astronomy. Here Galen, the father of pharmacy, learned what he knew of medicine. Here came the translators of the so-called Septuagint Bible, not seventy in number, and Palestine Jews, each translating in a separate cell, and each agreeing with all the rest in every word when the work was finished, according to the silly cock and bull story of Aristeus, but some dozen or fifteen Alexandrian Jews, well paid for their services by the ruling Ptolemy, and doing their work so thoroughly that both Jesus and Paul always quoted from their version. Here was the magnificent library of 700,000 volumes, of which fortunately 300,000 were transferred to the Serapeion before Julius Ctesar made a bonfire of tho Egyptian fleet, and accidentally burnt the Museum library as well. To Alexandria came the great Pompey—first as a mighty conqueror, and afterwards as a lonely fugitive to die by a traitor's dagger. Here came a still greater conqueror, Julius Ca3sar, soldier, statesman, historian, and master of the world. Here reigned the beautiful, clever, fascinating, voluptuous Cleopatra, and here in one interview she conquered the conqueror of the world, and was openly adopted as his mistress. Here Mark Antony—hardy soldier, subtle speaker, and wiley statesman —succumbed to the same fascination, and lost his chance of the Boman Empire. Here Cleopatra herself applied the little poisoncmsasp to her bosom, and died rather than walk in the triumphal procession of Octavius as a captive at Rome. Here, when Christianity was making rapid progress in its early days, Paul's contemporary, the learned Jew Philo, founded the schools of the Neo-Platonists ; and as Millindates a century before had formed a confederacy of all Eastern nations to hurl them upon Rome formed his confederacy of all manner of incongruous kinds of thought to unite in an eclectic school, embracing every philosophy and every religion, in order to overthrow Christianity. Here his followers, Plotinus, Porpleysy, Jamblichus, and Proclus, followed in their leader's footsteps, and boasted of having been actually absorbed into the essence of the Deity. Here Basilides, Yalentinus and other Gnostics, the earliest compilers of Christianity borrowed from Persia their ceons and demiverges to tack on as needless supplements to the Christian faith. Here the great Origen, the only man of genius among the Fathers of the Church, dictated to eight virgins, his amanuenses, the best thought of the time ; and here large-minded and large-hearted Clement, the great broad churchman of early days, wrote his judicious epistles to his clergy. Here Athanasius and Amis twaddled and squabbled and split theological hairs, and each, in turn invoked the power of the Emperor to prove his doctrine true by taking away the life of his opponent. Here the beautiful, high-souled Hypatia, last of the ancient Grseks, wrote on mathematics and lectured on philosophy, and met her tragic fate; that fate being to be dragged from her chariot through the public streets to the portico of the Ca_sareum by bigoted monks, to be stripped stark naked in the presence of the mob, and have the flesh and blood of her still living body scraped from her bones by oyster shells. Here her archmurderer, Cyril, the most savage brute ever officially sainted by a corrupt church, flourished as a great bishop on earth, and was reputed to be a, still greater saint after death! Here Monoplysite and anti-Mono-plysite churchmen fought to the death about the value of an iota, and thought they had solved the insoluble and analysed the inner nature of the Deity. And then all of a sudden we hear no more about Alexandria until the conquering Saracens were within the gates, and by order of Amora, as lieutenant of the Caliph Omar, the great library of the Serapeira was committed to the flames —or said to be, for Gibbon disputes the fact—and used up in heating the public baths of the city. For more than a thousand years it, too, like Tyre before it, had no history. At the end of last century its population had fallen to about 6000 inhabitants. Under the strong-minded Mohamed Ali, the Albanian ruler whom the father of Suez Canal Lesseps had recommended to the Sultan for the supposed sinecure of Pasha of Cairo, Egypt rose from her ashes, and Alexandria once more became a great port. Ismail's rash enterprises brought it still more trade. Its population lately had increased to 220,000. The climate of Alexandria is healthy, the fresh north wind being generally prevalent. The streets are parallel to, or at right angles with, one another. Peoplo of all nations throng to ifc, and as Marseilles is a place of rendezvous for all the world, especially Frenchmen, bo is Alexandria a place of rendezvous for all the world, especially Egyptians. Tho old part of the city still retains that air of stagnation which distinguishes Eastern life. The narrow streets, and massive, gloomy houses nearly meeting one another overhead, the dirt and filth and swarms of abominable insects, of all kinds, are essentially of the east, easterly. Savage dogs in vast numbers prowl about the streets, and they with the pigs and the vultures act as the public scavengers. Few women are to be seen in the streets, and these few wear dirty and ragged smock frocks and veil their faces. The great ladies of Alexandria rarely leave the seclusion of their harems evon to ap

pear veiled in public. In the European quarter all this is changed. The streets are broad, sometimes planted with trees and enlivened by fountains, and lighted with gas at night. There is a theatre, a German hospital, an English church, and good European hotels are easy to be found. The great public square, tho Place dcs Consuls, it said to be handsomer than any in Europe. Along the Mahmoudieh Canal which Mohamed Ali constructed, at a cost of the lives of 20,000 of the men employed, to convey fresh water from Atfeh, on the hill, 48 miles distant, to the south-east, in front of rows of houses almost approaching the character of palaces and painted outside blue, red, or yellow, are alleys of lemon and tamarind trees, and in the gardens the pearlgrey of the dinted-sword-looking aloes serves as an excellent foil for the bright green of the loaded banana and the brilliant hues of the oranges and the feathery tufts of the date-palms. Near the water side the poplar and willow remind tbe traveller from the west of his own country. Alexandria was rapidly becoming Europeanized from the force of surrounding circumstances, when the rebellion and murders of the traitor Arabi altered everything, and rendered the city for a tim_ unfit for civilized people. Until then the steadily increasing traffic with Greece, Italy, France and England was fast drawing more and more of western skill and capital to Alexandria, and its society was being enriched by wealthy invalids making it their home on account of its salubrity, once superior to that of either Nice, Naples or Madeira, and even now, notwithstanding the exhalations at certain seasons from the brackish mud and ?eeeds of Lake Mareotis near at hand, by no means below that of the best seaports of the world. Such is Alexandria, or rather, such was it until the recent bombardment, which has terribly damaged the appearance of what was becoming a very handsome city.