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to English? what pistols vie with those of England? do not the Pacha's cannons come from England?" "It is very true," replied the Ulema, "and they have conquered all the world excepting the dominions of the Sultan. India is theirs, and some say the Indian Moslems are their slaves." "Min Allah, heaven forbid!" exclaimed the priest, "a Moslem under an infidel, it cannot be; the Lord would not suffer a dog, a Caffre to call a true believer Servant; Min Allah!"

"It is even so," said the Effendi, "and the English now want to be our masters, and they will be one day. It has been long prophesied we must fall; Stamboul will see the son of yellowness, the Russian within her lofty walls, and Masr will be a bone between the dogs of France and England, but the latter must have it." "If either of the Caffres must have it," said the fat merchant, "let it be the French; if we only could keep our money and our women out of their reach, they are good humoured infidels enough, they love fantasia, they are always merry."

"It was not easy," said the divine, "when they were here, to keep either our money or our women from the Caffres-confusion to their race; the

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other infidels plundered the people less; but who loved them more? Were they not both the enemies of God's Prophet and his law?"

A good looking young man in an Arnaout uniform, who had hitherto been silent, now gave his opinion of the two powers: “The English Giaours," said he, "have most money, because they have only to send to India for as many ship loads as they please, and they can better afford to pay men for fighting for them than the others. The French bring no money with them; wherever they go they pillage, but they never take a paras away with them after all. Whichever gives the best thyme, rations, is the Giaour for an Arnaout."

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'Surely," exclaimed the Malim, "you would not draw your sword for a dog, a Christian?"

"For no man who did not pay me,” replied the Arnaout, evading the question.

What, for a Caffre?" rejoined the Malim. "Why not," said the Arnaout, "when the business is to cut another Caffre's throat?"

This was a good joke, and every one felt himself bound to laugh. When silence was restored, the lawyer put a question which puzzled the whole assembly exceedingly: "Where is

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England?"

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England," replied the priest, with the supercilious air of superior knowledge, “England is in London!" "La! la! moush kiddi,” cried the Effendi, the man of learning; "England is not in London, London is only a belled, a town, but England is in the great sea of the north, it is an island, like America, which is also English.”

"That's impossible," said the lawyer, "so great a nation never could be an island; are the people of Scio or Cyprus to be compared to the English, and are not both those places islands?"

"Do the French come from an island too?" said a Sheik, from Assouan, who had never seen an island but that of Elephantina, "there cannot many of them then."

be

"When they were here," said the Malim, "there was no scarcity of them, they were forty thousand strong in Scanderia alone.”

"Do not talk of thousands," exclaimed the priest, "callam milliouni, the word is millions; were they not like locusts from Scanderia to Assouan?" "With ten thousand Arnaouts," said the young soldier, "I would have driven them into the sea, every Caffre of them. How many thousands of English did we not trample on, in Raschid, a

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few years ago?"

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They were five and twenty thousand strong in Rosetta," said the lawyer, "and they were all slain." "Not all," answered the Effendi, “the General got his life, but there were only five thousand of them altogether."

"Five thousand or twenty," cried the lawyer, "is it not all the same thing; were they not all infidels, and were they not vanquished with the sword of Islam?"

"Allah karim," cried the priest, "God is most merciful; such be the fate of all who believe not in the true Prophet, to whose name be eternal glory."

"If the Sultan," said the Effendi, “ had taken off the heads of the Janissaries a hundred years ago, the law of Islam would now be spread over the whole earth."

"As it is," replied the priest, 66 are not the true believers like the stars of heaven? who can count them? is not their empire over the whole earth from the rising even to the setting place of the sun."

"It is not in the Frozen Ocean, however," said the Levantine, "there are no Moslems there."

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"It is a lie," said the priest, "they are every where, the Prophet has said it."

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What, in America?" said the Levantine, “it was only discovered a few years ago!"

"Well, then, if it was not known to the Prophet," replied the priest, "of course he had nothing to say to it."

But," continued the Levantine, in a low voice, "the law of the Prophet could not be intended for all mankind."

"It was meant for the universe," said the priest," and hell's fire is the portion of him who rejects it."

"If every man is bound to fast the Ramazan, from sunrise to sunset," replied the Levantine, "on the pain of reprobation, the Moslems of the Frozen Ocean, where the days are six months long, should feel somewhat exhausted."

"I do not believe it," cried the priest in a fury," who ever saw a day six months long? who could sleep an entire night of six months long?-no man.'

"But I read it in a book," said the Levantine, "written by the famous Volney."