=The Subjects of Pharaoh.=--The king, the priests, the warriors, the nobles, are proprietors of all Egypt; all the other people are simply their peasants who cultivate the land for them. Scribes in the service of the king watch them and collect the farm-dues, often with blows of the staff. One of these functionaries writes as follows to a friend, "Have you ever pictured to yourself the existence of the peasant who tills the soil. The tax-collector is on the platform busily seizing the tithe of the harvest. He has his men with him armed with staves, his negroes provided with strips of palm. All cry, 'Come, give us grain,' If the peasant hasn't it, they throw him full length on the earth, bind him, draw him to the canal, and hurl him in head foremost." =Despotism.=--The Egyptian people has always been, and still is, gay, careless, gentle, docile as an infant, always ready to submit to tyranny. In this country the cudgel was the instrument of education and of government. "The young man," said the scribes, "has a back to be beaten; he hears when he is struck." "One day," says a French traveller, "finding myself before the ruins of Thebes, I exclaimed, 'But how did they do all this?' My guide burst out laughing, touched me on the arm and, showing me a palm, said to me, 'Here is what they used to accomplish all this. You know, sir, with 100,000 branches of palms split on the backs of those who always have their shoulders bare, you can build many a palace and some temples to boot.'" =Isolation of the Egyptians.=--The Egyptians moved but little beyond their borders. As the sea inspired them with terror, they had no commerce and did not trade with other peoples. They were not at all a military nation. Their kings, it is true, often went on expeditions at the head of mercenaries either against the negroes of Ethiopia or against the tribes of Syria. They gained victories which they had painted on the walls of their palaces, they brought back troops of captives whom they used in building monuments; but they never made great conquests. Foreigners came more to Egypt than Egyptians went abroad. =Religion of the Egyptians.=--"The Egyptians," said Herodotus, "are the most religious of all men." We do not know any people so devout; almost all their paintings represent men in prayer before a god; almost all their manuscripts are religious books.