In going to Heliopolis I turned out of the way a few steps to look at the old sycamore many a pilgrim visits in the belief that Joseph and Mary, and the young Child, during their flight into Egypt, rested in its shade. There is no intimation that the Holy Family went beyond Pelusium, or Bubastis. To have gone so far would satisfy the requirements of the sacred narrative. As they were poor, probably they did not go far into the land, except that it might have been in the exercise of Joseph’s trade: though indeed I cannot imagine any one in Egypt, except a Jew, employing a Jewish carpenter. Of course, of the Jews who went down into Egypt there would be some who would be desirous of visiting Heliopolis, the On of Genesis, which was very interestingly connected with Jewish history; and, therefore, it is just possible the Holy Family may have gone so far.

But as to this tree. If one of its kind could possibly have lived so many centuries in Egypt, which is highly improbable, even under all the circumstances most favourable for the supply of water and protection from the wind, it would have required an oft-repeated miracle to have saved it from the axe during the many long periods of disorder Egypt has passed through since Joseph’s sojourn. The wood of a large tree is, in Egypt, too tempting at such times to be long spared.

I do not know the date of the first mention of this tree, but I think two hundred and fifty years would amply satisfy all the appearance of age it presents. Pococke, from whom I may observe in passing, that a great deal of the information, and many of the learned references contained in several modern works on Egypt, have been borrowed without acknowledgment, and in some cases taken verbatim, tells us that at the date of his visit, which was in 1737, a tree, I conclude the one still standing, was shown by the Copts as the one that afforded shelter to the Holy Family; but that the Latins denied its genuineness, affirming that they had cut down the true tree, that is to say, the one that had previously done duty in supplying a visible object for the legend, and had carried it to Jerusalem. This was probably false. Supposing it, however, to be true, it was a discreditable act, such as you might have expected from such monks.

But we have arrived at the tree. It at once appears that the feelings of some of the party are too deep for utterance. On these occasions knowledge and reason have to fight, against something or other, a battle that is lost often before it is begun. Belief is so much more natural and pleasant than iconoclasm. If you would but let yourself alone—of course you say nothing that would disillusion other people—their devout and heart-contenting imaginations would be reflected in yourself. As it is, you cannot help feeling the contagion. The upshot of the matter is, you are not altogether satisfied with your own unbelief, nor at all benefited by your half disposition to participate in the belief of your friends. As to the believer, his emotions are every way pleasant and satisfactory to himself.

But what took me to On was not to see the tree, but that I might stand before the Obelisk of Osirtasen, the oldest obelisk in Egypt, which has been pointing to the sky now for more than four thousand years—from the days of the old monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos. To them we may feel thankful for having allowed it to stand; and there was no International in those days. It had been erected for some centuries, when Abraham came down into Egypt. Joseph and Moses, who had both been admitted to the Priest Caste, and were learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, stood before it, and read the inscription, word for word, as the erudite Egyptologer reads it this day. Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato all studied here. Heliopolis was then the most celebrated university in the world for philosophy and science. Strabo was shown the house in which Plato had resided. Herodotus found the priests here in better repute for their learning than any elsewhere in Egypt. All these, and a host of other well-known Greeks, Romans, and Jews resided and studied here, during the many centuries of its renown. They all visited again and again, and walked round and deciphered, or had deciphered to them, the inscription on each side of this spit of granite. In those days it seemed to them a wonderful monument of hoar antiquity—far beyond anything that could be seen in their own countries. Everything they then saw at Heliopolis has been reduced to mounds of rubbish now, excepting this single stone. What a halo of interest invests it! Who would not wish to see it? Who can be unmoved as he looks upon it? Fifty centuries of history, and all the wisdom of Egypt are buried in the dust under his feet. You shift your position, and then smile at yourself—a sort of feeling had come upon you that you were obstructing the view of Joseph, or of Herodotus; that you were standing in the way of Plato, or of Moses.

But though the carking tooth of time has in no way set its mark on the monument of Osirtasen, a small fly has for the present obliterated, on three sides of it, the record he placed upon them. It has done this by filling up the incised hieroglyphics with its mud-cells. Whether it be a mason-wasp, or a bee, I was unable to discover, the cells being out of reach. I saw the same temporary eclipse of the sculptures and hieroglyphics going on at Dendera and elsewhere. The venom of this little insect is, I was told, equal to what I saw of its impudence.

The drive to Heliopolis is well worth taking on its own account. I found by the wayside a greater variety of culture, and of plants, than elsewhere in Egypt; oranges, lemons, ricinus, (which, with its spikes of red flowers and broad leaves, is, here, a handsome plant,) cactuses, vineyards, olive-trees, Australian eucalyptuses, and many other trees and plants.

Before I went to Heliopolis I asked a Scotchman I found myself seated next to at dinner one day at the table d’hôte, whether it was worth one’s while to go? ‘I will tell you just how it is,’ he replied. ‘I have been there. There is nothing to see; but it will give you a pleasant afternoon. It is like going out a fishing. The day is fine. The country looks well. You have a pleasant friend, and a good luncheon, with cigars and whisky. You come home without having seen a fish; but you are not dissatisfied with yourself for having gone.’ Having again met this gentleman after I had been there, he asked me how I had liked Heliopolis? He seemed so thoroughly satisfied with his own matter-of-fact, and very intelligible, way of regarding the world, and all it contains, that I refrained from telling him what I had thought. In his presence I almost doubted whether any pearls, excepting his, were not counterfeits: at all events, I was sure they would appear so to him. This, however, was but a momentary misgiving. There are some other sorts which, though not so common, are quite as genuine as his; perhaps, too, (but when one writes in English this must not be said without expressions of humility, and of readiness to receive correction,) they may have been formed by animals, the ingredients of whose food were somewhat more varied than is the case with the ordinary mollusk. But, be this as it may, those that are of the rarer sort have the advantage that, while they do not in the least interfere with the enjoyment of the sunshine, the pleasant scene, the friend, the good cigar, and the old whisky (perhaps rather giving depth to the enjoyment, because refining it), they are in themselves, and even without these agreeable adjuncts, a source of never-failing enjoyment. They are, as was said of such things long ago, as good for the night as for the day. They go with us into the country, and accompany us on our travels. It may, however, be objected to them that, in this country, they generally make their possessor unpractical, and leave him poorer, except in ideas, than they found him. There is no denying that it is so here, very often. Is the reason of this that our governing class, whether we interpret those words to mean the class from which our legislators, and administrators, have hitherto very generally been taken, or the class that put them in their places, that is, the shopocracy (can we hope anything better from our new governing class, that of the British artizan?) have cared but little for these things? Influences of this kind have made us a money-worshipping people—not that we have loved money more than other people, but that money has had too much power amongst us—so that too many of us, like my Scotch acquaintance, have learnt to pooh-pooh everything which does not fetch money—that is to say, nature and history, which are the materials out of which truth is constructed; and art, poetry, philosophy, and science, which are the construction itself: everything but money, and what will bring money in the market. And so, too, it came about that our highest education was merely a form of classicism accommodated to a narrow and shortsighted theology: what both nature and history might have taught would have been inconvenient, or, be that as it may, was not needed.

We know that in certain exceptional cases (they ought not to be so very exceptional) a man may possess the world that is to come, as well as the world my Scotch acquaintance had so tight a grip of. This is a difficult thing to do: on our system, and with our ideas, a very difficult thing; still one that may be done. The difficulty, however, appears to be very considerably increased, when the attempt is made to add to these two the possession of the world that has been. It is hard to keep two balls up in the air, and going, at the same time; but, to add a third, and to attend to all three properly, to give each its own due space and time, and to get them all to work harmoniously together, is a feat that reveals a very un-English mind, but still it is the master-mind. What were the performances of Egyptian Proteus to this? By turns he was many things, but here is a man who, at one and the same time, has three souls, and lives three lives. It is so, however, only in appearance: the interpretation of the Parable is that the man has passed mentally out of the flat-fish stage of being, in which sight is possible only in one direction; and has reached the higher stage in which it is possible to look in every direction; and so to connect all that is seen all around, as that the different objects shall not reciprocally obscure, but illumine each other.