In these respects Alexandria has changed, but not in itself. It has the same well-bred appearance as a city. There is the same absorption of its regular population in business or in pleasure. The Bourse, the hub of the city, is as animated as ever with bearded, gesticulating French, Italian and Greek financiers taking their coffee on its verandah looking down the Square. The Rue Cherif Pacha is as close-packed as before with the carriages of rich French dowagers and pretty French aristocrats. They have their coachmen in livery, and they know how to dress irresistibly. There are not many finer human sights in this world than is made by a young French mother, gowned and toileted with an art that conceals art, reclining in the barouche with her daughters in the Alexandrian winter afternoon sunshine. The Melbourne "Block" brags of its reputation for beauty, but here is a fine essence of beauty such as Paris at her best would own, which Paris, one suspects, actually does flaunt in the summer. The best beauty of Paris, Milan, and Athens, winters here. So does much of England. At present it is chiefly the wives of officers; and they are no mean stock. That Place Mahomet Ali is endlessly interesting and endlessly picturesque. The gamut of the city's life is run-over here any afternoon. It's a stately Square: stately in the buildings that surround it--Stein's and the majestic Bourse and St. Mark's and the best hotels. There are the rows of well-kept gharries and well-groomed horses--kept as well as most private carriages. The two well-planted islands stand green and quiet in the midst of the gentle roar and moving colour, and the fine equestrian statue of Mahomet Ali looks with dignity down upon it all. It's perhaps the most cosmopolitan crowd in the world that moves about the Square. The typically Arab quarter is segregated--lies in a labyrinth of bazaars in a well-defined area off the Square. Cairo is flooded with the life and business of the Arab in every quarter. Cairo, too, is compassed about with so much of Ancient Egyptian relics as to distract you from the occupation of first importance: looking upon the living. They are of more import than the dead. In Alexandria the ancient monuments are few, but those few are well preserved and mostly confined within the walls of the Classical Museum. You may watch the life of Alexandria undistracted by any subconscious urging to be out stooping and panting through the Great Pyramid for the fifth time (that nothing be lost), or wandering among the silent Tombs of the Caliphs.