LETTERS ON EGYPT.

LETTER I.

Cadiz-Gibraltar-The Cork Wood-Carteia.

TO LIEUTENANT COLONEL LINDSAY.

Gibraltar, November 10, 1836.

How I longed for you, yesterday, dear James, at Cadiz, and here, too, at Gibraltar, happy should I have been this morning to have

had

your company during the glorious scramble I have had over every ridge of the old Rock! But of Cadiz first-I thought as we sailed away yestreen, (a delicious autumnal evening), I had

never seen a lovelier sight, her long serrated ridge of white buildings sharply defined against a glowing sunset sky-Rota glittering, like a town of King Salem's sprung up from Ocean, at the further extremity of the bay, tipping its horn, as it were, with a diamond crown-the lateen sails scudding around us like gigantic nautiluses, stooping over the green waters like the beautiful sea-birds that were sporting in every direction-oh! it was lovely, very lovely!

We had but four hours allowed us to visit Cadiz; I threw my shyness to the winds, and used my eyes, stared into every nook and corner, and at every one, man and woman, we met. But you cannot have forgotten the scene, though long familiarity with its details may have effaced the remembrance of your first general impressions; to me it was all "fresh and fresh, new and new," like the Indian beauty in the song—a living, breathing, moving

tableau, a waking dream rather, for whether I was in or out of the body I can scarce tell, now that I reflect on the vision, so many ideas familiar to my fancy were then presented to my eyes in the warmest glow of reality; all, too, intensely Spanish -the long black cloaks of the sleepy hidalgos, long as their names, threadbare many of them as the mantle of chivalry their ancestors wore so gracefully the Moorish faces, conical hats, and sashes of the lower, and, as they seemed to me, far nobler order-the cigarillos, common to all— the fans, mantillas, the black eyes, beautiful feet, and graceful gliding gait of the Señoritas -but oh! what frights the old women are! and then the painted balconies above, that give such a character to the straight narrow stradas, flowers in most of them, but, alas! the "fairer flowers," Eve's daughters, were few or none visible upon them—and the dazzling white ness of the houses, every thing, too, as clean

as if the Gaditanos were Dutchmen,-it was like a scene of enchantment; to say nothing of the exquisite delight of being on Spanish ground, and hearing the language of Calderon and Cervantes on every lip that passed me.

I saw but two or three priests, not idly sauntering about as in the palmy days of Rome, but walking, it seemed to me, with an object,-slowly, however, as if their ponderous shells of hats were too heavy for them, and crestfallen; in this respect your Spanish recollections must vary from existing circumstances: the convents, too, were all shut up, and the bells over the gates looked as if conscious of having tolled their last. We knocked loud and long at one of the conventual buildings, in hopes of seeing some pictures once shown there; but no porter hurried to the gate, the street was silent, only one boy to be seen in it, and he could not tell us who had the keys.

The cathedral, however, is still building, a

most superb edifice of the richest Corinthian architecture, but overloaded in many places, I thought, with ornament; the choir, however, is truly beautiful, all marble; indeed the whole temple is so, and exquisitely finished. Yet I do not like the Corinthian; the "airy pillar" and the "decent matron grace " of the Ionic are far lovelier, far purer, far holier; the Doric and Ionic remind one of Adam and Eve as they walked in naked innocence, and in all their original brightness, through the bowers of Paradise; but the spirit of the Corinthian is meretricious, too like that of the Laises and Co. of old Corinth herself: this is fanciful, perhaps, but oh! there is a deep poetry, a hidden melody, in architecture, "frozen music," as it has been called, but it thaws now and then, when the fancy warms, and discourses most eloquently to her ear and eye.

How beautiful, by the way, are Schlegel's criticisms on the Gothic architecture! Did