148 AFRICAN WAXDERIXCS.

disgust. They also rejoice in all kinds of puddings, or sweet dishes made with rice ; but sweetmeats are their greatest delight, and for these all of them, botli old and young, would almost give their souls. A plain soup they know not ; theirs must be thickened with rice, or with some kind of pastes. In Egypt most of the Italians are in office of some kind, and unfortunately the greater part of them are mere charlatans, totally without, or only with the smallest smattering of education and science. All are conceited of their own persons, country, and race, which they hold as the first in the world, and it is most laughable to hear them brag and boast. They fancy they are still the same people who formerly ruled the world ; those from Venice and its neighbourhood, still dream of the times of the Dorias and the glorious republic. English, French, and Germans they despise ; and if one tells them of new or improved institutions in these countries, they defyingly assert the idea was borrowed from Italy ; or if this is too palpable a falsehood even for tiiem, then the thing is good for nothing. But the main cause of their holding all other nations as stupid, is, that none of the others will or can rival them in their baseness and wickedness. Alas for their sweet language! only used by them as a covering for tlieir falsehood and faithlessness. Honour, honesty, or chivalrous courage, are unknown to them ; never do they confront their foe face to face, but lurk for him in dark ambuscades, and only even then against the solitary and defenceless, do they dare to use a weapon. They, whose country is the toy of the great European powers, and which trembles if only a few companies of Austrian soldiers appear in it, foster yet the high idea of the future liberty and union of all Italy, and hope then to surpass the Rome of old. But in the mean time they hate each other as the plague, living ever among themselves in constant discord and strife. Among them, that is, among the Italians themselves, the palm as conspirators and intriguers is yielded to the Piedmontese, who are easily to be distinguished from the others by the broadness and boorishness of their dialect. A worthy representative of these is the apothecary Major, Lumello, at Chartum, who, from being a billiard-marker in Alexandria, raised himself by his serpentlike cunning to this post, and who understands as much of chemistry, and compounding drugs, as one of our peasants does of heraldry.