Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/78



Alexandria has been, history tells in large and memorable characters. Mr. Kingsley is not without large hope of her future also. As the unrivalled advantages of her locale were seen at a glance by Philip's warlike son, "one of the greatest intellects whose influence the world has ever felt," and at once suggested to him the "mighty project of making it the point of union of two, or rather of three worlds,"—so the author of "Hypatia" believes that a glance at the map, which is enough to see what an , a centre of the world, this Alexandria is, may naturally arouse in other minds, what it has often done in his, the suspicion that the place has not yet fulfilled its whole destiny, but may become at any time a prize for contending nations, or the centre of some world-wide empire to come. "The stream of commerce is now rapidly turning back to its old channel; and British science bids fair to make Alexandria once more the inn of all the nations." The fate of Palestine, we are reminded, is now more than ever bound up with the fate of the city with whose history its own was inextricably united for more than three centuries; and a British or French colony might, it is added, holding the two countries, develop itself into a nation as vast as sprang from Alexander's handful of Macedonians, and become the meeting point for the nations of the West, and those great Anglo-Saxon peoples who seem destined to spring up in the Australian ocean. And then with regard to intellectual development, Mr. Kingsley opines, that though Alexandria wants, and always has wanted, "that insular and exclusive position which seems almost necessary to develop original thought and original national life, yet she may still act," as in her palmy days she so effectually did, as the "point of fusion for distinct schools and polities"—a rallying-place of both conflicting and converging forces, where the "young and buoyant vigour of the new-born nations may at once teach, and learn from, the prudence, the experience, the traditional wisdom of the ancient Europeans." So speculates one not without pretension to the functions of the Seer. For ourselves, we can but say, we shall see.

In these four Lectures, a rapid survey is taken of the varied phases of the historical and philosophical life of Alexandria, from the dawn of her renown under the first Ptolemy to her decadence in mediæval times. No dry summary of facts and dates and doctrines, however; as far as the veriest habitué in light reading can desire, from that; but enlivened and enriched and relieved with graphic passages, and rich colouring, and happily-devised side-lights, such as all acquainted with the lecturer's previous writings will know how to give him credit for. Lecture-going people, who had hitherto possessed only a mummified sort of notion of