"'The American and English missionaries have schools in various parts of Egypt, and have done a great deal toward the cause of education. For a long time they labored under many disadvantages; but of late years the government has recognized the importance of their services, and made large donations in lands and money for their schools. Miss Whately, the daughter of Archbishop Whately, has a school here in Cairo, which she has established by her own exertions, for the purpose of educating the girls of the lower classes; she devotes her entire time to this work of charity, and I am happy to say that she is fully appreciated by the native as well as the foreign population. It is quite possible that the example of this self-sacrificing woman led the wife of the Khedive to establish the schools already mentioned. [Illustration: INSTRUCTION AT HOME.] "'Probably the largest school in Egypt,' the Doctor continued, 'is the religious one attached to the Mosque El-Azhar. The building is of no great consequence as a work of architecture, as it consists of a series of porticos of different periods of construction; but it has long been celebrated as a university for Moslem instruction, and has had an uninterrupted career of more than eight hundred years. "'It is not only the largest school in Egypt, but probably the largest in the world, as it has more than ten thousand students.' [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE EL-AZHAR.] "Ten thousand students in one school? "Yes, ten thousand students; the last year for which I have seen the figures there were ten thousand seven hundred and eighty students, and three hundred and twenty-one professors. The students are from all parts of the world where the religion of Mohammed prevails; but naturally the great majority of them are from Egypt. They remain from three to six years at the university, and pay no fees for instruction. The professors have no salaries, but depend upon presents from the pupils who can afford to make them, and upon what they can earn by private teaching, writing letters, and similar work. The poor pupils support themselves in the same way. Many of them sleep in the mosque, and the building has an apartment set aside for students from each country or province of Egypt. There is a library for the use of students in each of these apartments, and the university formerly had a large revenue, but it was taken away by Mohammed Ali, and has never been restored.