EGYPTIAN SCHOOLS. SCHOOLS are very numerous, not only in the metropolis, but in every large town; and there is one at least in every considerable village. Almost every mosque, sebee'l (or public fountain), and hho'd (or drinking-place for cattle) in the metropolis has a koota b (or school) attached to it, in which children are instructed for a very trifling expense; the sheykh or fick'ee (the master of the school) receiving from the parent of each pupil half a piaster (about five farthings of our money); or something more or less, every Thursday. The master of a school attached to a mosque or other public building in Cairo also generally receives yearly a turboo'sh, a piece of white muslin for a turban, a piece of linen, and a pair of shoes; and each boy receives, at the same time, a linen scull-cap, four or five cubits of cotton cloth, and perhaps half a piece (ten or twelve cubits) of linen, and a pair of shoes, and, in some cases, a half-piaster or piaster. These presents are supplied by funds bequeathed to the school, and are given in the month of Ram'ada'n. The boys attend only during the hours of instruction, and then return to their homes. The lessons are generally written upon tablets of wood, painted white; and when one lesson is learned, the tablet is washed, and another is written. They also practise writing upon the same tablet. The schoolmaster and his pupils sit upon the ground, and each boy has his tablet in his hands, or a copy of the Koran, or of one of its thirty sections, on a little kind of desk of palm-sticks. All who are learning to read recite their lessons aloud, at the same time rocking their heads and bodies incessantly backward and forward; which practice is observed by almost all persons in reading the Koran, being thought to assist the memory. The noise may be imagined. The boys first learn the letters of the alphabet; next, the vowel-points and other orthographical marks; and then the numerical value of each letter of the alphabet. Previously to this third stage of the pupil's progress, it is customary for the master to ornament the tablet with black and red ink, and green paint, and to write upon it the letters of the alphabet in the order of their respective numerical values, and convey it to the father, who returns it with a piaster or two placed upon it. The like is also done at several subsequent stages of the boy's progress, as when he begins to learn the Koran, and six or seven times as he proceeds in learning the sacred book, each time the next lesson being written on the tablet. When he has become acquainted with the numerical values of the letters, the master writes for him some simple words, as the names of men, then the ninety-nine names or epithets of GOD; next the fa't'hhah (or opening chapter of the Koran) is written upon his tablet, and he reads it repeatedly, until he has perfectly committed it to memory. He then proceeds to learn the other chapters of the Koran: after the first chapter, he learns the last; then the last but one; next the last but two; and so on, in inverted ORIENTAL WATER-CARRIER. 75 order, ending with the second, as the chapters in general successively decrease in length from the second to the last inclusively. It is seldom that the master of a school teaches writing, and few boys learn to write unless destined for some employment which absolutely requires that they should do so, in which latter case they are generally taught the art of writing, and likewise arithmetic, by a ckabba'nee, who is a person employed to weigh goods in a market or bazar with the steelyard. Those who are to devote themselves to religion, or to any of the learned professions, mostly pursue a regular course of study in the great mosque El-Azhar. ORIENTAL WATER-CARRIER. IN oriental towns, water is not conveyed to the several streets and houses by pipes or trenches. It must all be brought from the river or the wells. In towns, this is seldom done by the householders themselves, or by their servants. There are men who make it a trade to supply every day, to regular customers, the quantity of water required. This they carry about in a well-prepared goatskin, which is slung to the back in the manner represented in our cut, the neck, which is usually brought under the arm and compressed by the hand, serving as the mouth of this curious, but exceedingly useful vessel. Persons of larger dealings have an ass which carries two skins at once, borne like panniers : and we have known very prosperous water-carriers who had oxskins carried on a horse. These men, continually passing to and fro with their wet bags through the narrow streets, are great nuisances in the towns, from the difficulty of avoiding contact with them. The care taken to avoid them, in some degree answers to that which people exhibit in our own streets to avoid carriages and carts. In a time of public calamity the water-carriers are the last to discontinue their labor; and their doing so is a sure indication that the distress has become most intense and imminent, and is indeed a great calamity in itself. ANCIENT BOOKS AND WRITING MATERIALS. ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS. I. VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES.-1. Wood. Inscriptions on wood are very ancient, but do not require to be here noticed. Tablets of wood were very early in use, and seem to have been generally employed much in the same way as slates among ourselves: that is, for temporary writing. Sometimes they were single, but frequently from two to five or more leaves done up into a sort of book, something like our slate-books. The Greeks and Romans usually coated the boards with wax, on which the letters were traced with a style, or pen, commonly of iron, but also of gold, silver, brass, and sometimes ivory or bone. These instruments had one end pointed, to trace the letters, and the other broad and smooth, for the purpose of obliterating what had been written, by spreading back the wax, so as to render it fit to receive other words. In such books, there was in the middle of each leaf a sort of button, to prevent the pages from touching each other when closed. But the greater warmth of their climate prevented the Jews from generally using wax; they, therefore, wrote on the tables with a kind of ink, which could be easily sponged out when necessary. Such tablets of wood were in use long before the time of Homer, and Horne thinks it highly probable that several of the prophets were upon tablets of wood, or some similar material. They were not wholly disused in Europe until the fourteenth century; and are still employed in North Africa, Western Asia, and Greece. The leaves of these tablet-books, whether of wood, metal, or ivory, were connected together by rings at the back, through which a rod was passed, which served as a handle to carry them by. 2. Bark of Trees.-The fine inner bark of such trees as the lime, ash, maple, or elm, was early used as a substance for writing. As such was called in Latin liber, this name came permanently to be applied to all kinds of books, and has, in a similar connexion, been adopted into most European languages. These books, like all other flexible materials, were rolled up to render them portable, and to preserve the writing. They were usually rolled round a stick or cylinder; and if they were long, round two cylinders. Hence the name volume (volumen)—a thing rolled up which continues to be applied to books very different from rolls. In using the roll, the reader unrolled it to the place he wanted, and rolled it up again when he had read it. 3. Leaves of Trees.-Pliny thinks that the most early substance for writing was the leaf of the palm-tree; meaning, we presume, the first flexible substance. Be this as it may, the process is certainly of very remote antiquity; and would be naturally suggested by its being perceived how readily particular leaves received and retained marks made by a pointed instrument. At this day, books made with the leaves of different trees are common among the |