After passing in review this splendid vision, we shot rapidly round the Rock of Pharos, and, in a few minutes, found ourselves in the harbour of Eunostus. The sun had risen, but the light on the Great Tower of the Rock was still burning; and there was a languor in the first waking movements of that voluptuous city—whose houses and temples lay shining in silence round the harbour—that sufficiently attested the festivities of the preceding night. We were soon landed on the quay; and, as I walked, through a line of palaces and shrines, up the street which leads from the sea to the Gate of Canopus, fresh as I was from the contemplation of my own lovely Athens, I felt a glow of admiration at the scene around me, which its novelty, even more than its magnificence, inspired. Nor were the luxuries and delights, which such a city promised, among the least of the considerations on which my fancy, at that moment, dwelt. On the contrary, every thing around seemed prophetic of future pleasure. The very forms of the architecture, to my Epicurean imagination, appeared to call up images of living grace; and even the dim seclusion of the temples and groves spoke only of tender mysteries to my mind. As the whole bright scene grew animated around me, I felt that though Egypt might not enable me to lengthen life, she could teach the next best art,—that of multiplying its enjoyments. The population of Alexandria, at this period, consisted of the most motley miscellany of nations, religions, and sects, that had ever been brought together in one city. Beside the school of the Grecian Platonist was seen the oratory of the cabalistic Jew; while the church of the Christian stood, undisturbed, over the crypts of the Egyptian Hierophant. Here, the adorer of Fire, from the east, laughed at the superstition of the worshipper of cats, from the west. Here Christianity, too, unluckily, had learned to emulate the vagaries of Paganism; and while, on one side, her Ophite professor was seen kneeling down gravely before his serpent, on the other, a Nicosian was, as gravely, contending that there was no chance of salvation out of the pale of the Greek alphabet. Still worse, the uncharitableness of Christian schism was already distinguishing itself with equal vigour; and I heard of nothing, on my arrival, but the rancour and hate, with which the Greek and Latin churchmen persecuted each other, because, forsooth, the one fasted on the seventh day of the week, and the others fasted upon the fourth and sixth!