TOMBS OF THE MEMLOOKS, CAIRO

ANOTHER of those picturesque but nameless mosque-tombs which are scattered over that part of the Desert which lies just without the walls of Cairo and forms its necropolis; they help to fill the pages of the artist's sketch-book, though they have not left a line for the historian's. Raised at a great cost by the caliph, or the bey for his tomb, it sometimes happened that he never rested there; but found in the utter want of protection for life and property under such governments as have cursed Egypt, a more ignoble and dishonoured grave, with no one to inherit, for none ventured to claim the dangerous honour of being his successor: his name was soon forgotten and his mosque-tomb left to fall into decay, like the dust of the common inhabitants of the earth around him.