Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/267

 what analysis will ever disengage and measure the ingredient of personal vanity which enters into and combines with disinterested enthusiasm in all public exhibitions of extravagant and unusual forms of devout emotion? Every religious zealot, from a Brahmin fakir to an English Revivalist, has one eye only upon the deity of his worship, and the other upon the spectator. Who can say which of the two organs of vision fixes the more intent gaze on its object?

The howlers of to-night in the Mosque of Mohammed Ali are noisier than the dervishes in the Kasr-el-Ain, but then they are, perhaps, a little more human. In revenge, however, their grimaces are more hideous, and their cervical column seems to have such a peculiar pliancy as to create the agreeable illusion that their heads, which they wag from side to side with a looseness that puts to shame the fore-and-aft nutations of the porcelain mandarin, are about to part company with their bodies. On the whole, they