Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

206

CITIES OF EGYPT.

• burnt, her history ceases. Never afterwards the capital
' of Egypt, Alexandria only appears from time to time as
a seat of commercial wealth. We read, indeed, how an
Arab prince in the ninth century restored the Library and
the University, as though the old institutions had risen
from their ashes ; but in the vicissitudes of history there
was no stability in this revival, and we hear of it no more.

Our own days witnessed a return of the greatness of
Alexandria due to the establishment of the new route to
India. The old city had shrunk to the space on the
mole, when suddenly a new town grew on Alexander's
mantle, an abode of Western merchants, not beautiful,
but with the stateliness of wealth in the great square
and the long lines of broad streets. The later Felusium,
Port Said, on the ample harbour of the canal of the two
seas, despite a better site, fever-stricken by the air of
Lake Menzeleh, could not rival the older city. Then
came, as in the Roman time, revolt and the interference
of the West, Alexandria once more the centre of resis-
tance, once more stricken the hardest blow, and in the
destruction of the new town, the latest proof of the
wanton temper of the Alexandrian mob.

Unlike Rome and Athens, Alexandria has scarcely a