But in all this antiquarian excitement, which usually occupies the undivided attention of less enthusiastic travellers, Mr. Taylor neglected not the living. He witnessed with interest the graces of the Arabian dancing-girls, noticed the features of the beggar-boys, the methods of teaching children the Koran, and the worn appearance of the water-carriers. Leaving Luxor, they spent three or four days ascending the river to Assouan, and in visiting the villages, old temples, half-buried cities, and gorgeously decorated tombs in the mountain-sides, which are almost numberless in the valley of Upper Egypt. At Assouan, he was most cordially received by the Governor and was given a friendly greeting by all the officials he met. From that town he made several excursions with his German friend, the most interesting of which was that to the cataract of the Nile and the island of Philæ. There he saw the celebrated temple of the time of the Ptolemies, which he looked upon as modern, because it was not over twenty-two hundred years old. But he felt sufficient interest in the ruins of the old city to describe that marvellous colonnade which has astonished so many visitors to the island of Philæ. The reader of his letters can detect, however, in Mr. Taylor’s description of columns, aisles, roofs, walls, capitals, sculptures, monoliths, and colossi, a vein of sadness which may have colored his views. At all events the ruins of Philæ did not impress him as they seem to have affected other visitors. The fact that he was so soon to part with a companion for whom he felt a love like that of Jonathan for David, may have had more or less influence upon his capacity to enjoy scenery or the remains of antiquity: for the writer looked upon Philæ as one of the most interesting localities of the lower Nile, and cannot but regard the ruined temple as one of the grandest in Egypt. They visited the fields, villages, the tombs, the ancient quarry, wherein half-sculptured statues and columns still remain unmoved, and after a day of antiquarian research they rode back to their boat, as he said “with heavy hearts.” The next day came the hour of parting; and these two men, one a young man, the other an elderly gentleman, who had been utter strangers forty days before, now clung to each other with the sincerest brotherly love and parted in tears. How little did Mr. Taylor think, as he saw the boat sailing away for Cairo with the Saxe-Coburg colors at the peak, where he had so long kept the Stars and Stripes, that they would meet again in the sunny southern lands of Europe, and that another person would join their company for life and make up what he termed “a sacred triad.” He thought then that the parting might be for all time. He was going into an unknown wilderness, while his friend sought again the lands of civilization: it was a long time before either could dispel the gloom which their separation left about them. [Illustration: PHILÆ COLONNADE.]