of the Nile to peaceful
research, the treasures of Memphis were revealed to the astonished
gaze of western learning. Many of the more portable relics were
transferred to Cairo, and thence to Rosetta or Alexandria, in order to
grace the museums of Paris. The _savants_ proposed, but sea-power
disposed, of these treasures. They are now, with few exceptions, in
the British Museum.

Apart from archaeology, much was done to extend the bounds of learning.
Astronomy gained much by the observations of General Caffarelli. A
series of measurements was begun for an exact survey of Egypt: the
geologists and engineers examined the course of the Nile, recorded the
progress of alluvial deposits at its mouth or on its banks, and
therefrom calculated the antiquity of divers parts of the Delta. No
part of the great conqueror's career so aptly illustrates the truth of
his noble words to the magistrates of the Ligurian Republic: "The true
conquests, the only conquests which cost no regrets, are those
achieved over ignorance."

Such, in brief outline, is the story of the renascence in Egypt. The
mother-land of science and learning, after a wellnigh barren interval
of 1,100 years since the Arab conquest, was now developed and
illumined by the application of the arts with which in the dim past
she had enriched the life of barbarous Europe. The repayment of this
incalculable debt was due primarily to the enterprise of Bonaparte. It
is one of his many titles to fame and to the homage of posterity. How
poor by the side of this encyclopaedic genius are the gifts even of
his most brilliant foes! At that same time the Archduke Charles of
Austria was vegetating in inglorious ease on his estates. As for
Beaulieu and Wuermser, they had subsided into their native obscurity.
Nelson, after his recent triumph, persuading himself that "Bonaparte
had gone to the devil," was bending before the whims of a professional
beauty and the odious despotism of the worst Court in Europe. While
the admiral tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of Naples, his great
opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his
position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light
into the dark continent. While his adversaries were merely generals or
admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality,
Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its
possible influence on the reorganization of society. He is not