As I passed through the halls I saw some of the boys mending their clothes and others spreading their wash out in the sun to dry. They did not seem ashamed of their poverty and I saw much to admire in their attitude. The professors serve for nothing, supporting themselves by teaching in private houses or by reading the prayers at the mosques. It is considered such a great honour to be a professor here that the most learned men of the Mohammedan world are glad to lecture in the El-Azhar without reward. In fact, the only man about the institution who receives a salary is the president, who has ten thousand piastres a year. This seems much until one knows that the piastre is only five cents, and that it takes ten thousand of them to make five hundred dollars. I asked about the government of the university, and was told that it had a principal and assistant professors. All students are under the direct control of the university, so if they misbehave outside its walls, the police hand them over to the collegiate authorities for punishment. The students are exempt from military service, and it is said that many enter the institution for that reason alone. There seem to be no limitations as to age or as to the time one may spend at the college. I saw boys between six and eight studying the Koran in one corner of the building, and gray-bearded men sitting around a professor in another. Most of the scholars, however, are from sixteen to twenty-two or of about the same age as our college boys at home. This university has little to do with the great movement of modern education now going on in Egypt. It is religious rather than academic, and the live, active educational forces outside it are two. One of these is the United Presbyterian Church and its mission school at Asyut, about three hundred miles farther up the Nile valley, and the other is the government. There are besides about one thousand schools supported by the Copts, the most intelligent of the native population. When the British took over the administration Egypt was very illiterate, and even now not more than six per cent. of the natives can read and write. But the desire for learning is increasing and the system of common schools which has been inaugurated is being developed. There are now about four thousand five hundred schools in the country, with over three hundred thousand pupils. There are a number of private schools, several normal schools, and schools devoted to special training. A system of technical education has been started and the government has model workshops at Bulak and Asyut. At Cairo it has a school of agriculture, a school of engineering, and schools of law and medicine.