unshine, for they are the children--but not
grown men--of the sun. That, indeed, is one of the many strange things
in Egypt--the youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost
terrible antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the
world and to feel perpetually young--young as Philae is young, as a
lyric of Shelley's is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the
people of Egypt are young.

Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae
could be preserved even as it is now! The spoilers are there,
those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully clever and capable, so
industrious, so determined, so unsparing of themselves and--of others!
Already they are at work "benefiting Egypt." Tall chimneys begin to
vomit smoke along the Nile. A damnable tram-line for little trolleys
leads one toward the wonderful colossi of Memnon. Close to Kom Ombos
some soul imbued with romance has had the inspiration to set up--a
factory! And Philae--is it to go?

Is beauty then of no value in the world? Is it always to be the prey of
modern progress? Is nothing to be considered sacred; nothing to be left
untouched, unsmirched by the grimy fingers of improvement? I suppose
nothing.

Then let those who still care to dream go now to Philae's painted
chamber by the long reaches of the Nile; go on, if they will, to the
giant forms of Abu-Simbel among the Nubian sands. And perhaps they will
think with me, that in some dreams there is a value greater than the
value that is entered in any bank-book, and they will say, with me,
however uselessly:

"Leave to the world some dreams, some places in which to dream; for if
it needs dams to make the grain grow in the stretches of land that were
barren, and railways and tram-lines, and factory chimneys that vomit
black smoke in the face of the sun, surely it needs also painted
chambers of Philae and the silence that comes down from Isis."

XVIII

OLD CAIRO

By Old Cairo I do not mean only _le vieux Caire_ of the guide-book,
the little, desolate village containing the famous Coptic church of Abu
Sergius, in the crypt of which the Virgin Mary and Christ are said to
have stayed when they fled to the land of Egypt to escape the fury of
King Herod; but the Cairo that is not new, that is not dedicated wholly
to officialdom and tourists, that, in the midst of changes and the
advance of civilisation--civilisation that does so much harm as well
as so much