a cultivated female mind by
a residence among the modern inhabitants of the land of the pyramids, was
still a desideratum. The "Notes" (published in 1840 in the _Asiatic
Journal_) of the late lamented Emma Roberts, than whom no one would have
been better qualified to fill up the void, though replete with interest
and information, are merely those of a traveller hastening through the
country on her way to India; and, except the fugitive sketches of Mrs
Dawson Damer, we cannot call to mind a single one among all the
lady-tourists, with whose tours and voyages the press has lately teemed,
who has touched on this hitherto unbroken ground. In such a dearth of
information, we may deem ourselves doubly fortunate in finding the task
undertaken by a lady possessing such peculiar advantages as must have been
enjoyed by the sister of the well-known Orientalist, to whose pen we are
indebted for perhaps the most comprehensive and accurate account ever
published of the habits and manners of any nation, and under whose
immediate superintendence, as we are informed, the work before us was
prepared.

The title of the "Englishwoman in _Cairo_," would perhaps have more
appropriately designated the character of Mrs Poole's volumes than that
which she has adopted; since her opportunities of personal observation,
after her arrival in the capital from Alexandria, were bounded by the
environs of the city, her excursions from which do not appear to have
extended further than the pyramids. A considerable portion of the first
volume is occupied by an abstract of Egyptian history from the time of the
Arab conquest, an account of the foundation of Cairo, an agricultural and
general calendar for each month of the year, and various matters connected
with the physical features, statistics, &c., of the country. These
dissertations form a sort of supplement to the work of her brother, from
whose MS. notes they are avowedly taken; being introduced (as Mrs Poole,
with much _naivete_, confesses) "in the hope of obtaining a more
favourable reception for her letters, for the sake of the more solid
matter with which they are interspersed;" but though they certainly convey
much valuable additional information to the readers of the "Modern
Egyptians," they are scarcely "germane to the matter," as interpolations
in the work of a lady. The authoress can very well afford to rest her
claim to popularity on her own merits; and we prefer to follow her, in her
own pec