" Tall chimneys begin to
vomit smoke along the Nile. A damnable tram-line for little trolleys
leads one toward the wonderful colossi of Memnon. Close to Kom Ombos
some soul imbued with romance has had the inspiration to set up--a
factory! And Philae--is it to go?
Is beauty then of no value in the world? Is it always to be the prey of
modern progress? Is nothing to be considered sacred; nothing to be left
untouched, unsmirched by the grimy fingers of improvement? I suppose
nothing.
Then let those who still care to dream go now to Philae's painted
chamber by the long reaches of the Nile; go on, if they will, to the
giant forms of Abu-Simbel among the Nubian sands. And perhaps they will
think with me, that in some dreams there is a value greater than the
value that is entered in any bank-book, and they will say, with me,
however uselessly:
"Leave to the world some dreams, some places in which to dream; for if
it needs dams to make the grain grow in the stretches of land that were
barren, and railways and tram-lines, and factory chimneys that vomit
black smoke in the face of the sun, surely it needs also painted
chambers of Philae and the silence that comes down from Isis."
XVIII
OLD CAIRO
By Old Cairo I do not mean only _le vieux Caire_ of the guide-book,
the little, desolate village containing the famous Coptic church of Abu
Sergius, in the crypt of which the Virgin Mary and Christ are said to
have stayed when they fled to the land of Egypt to escape the fury of
King Herod; but the Cairo that is not new, that is not dedicated wholly
to officialdom and tourists, that, in the midst of changes and the
advance of civilisation--civilisation that does so much harm as well
as so much good, that showers benefits with one hand and defaces beauty
with the other--preserves its immemorial calm or immemorial turmult;
that stands aloof, as stands aloof ever the Eastern from the Western
man, even in the midst of what seems, perhaps, like intimacy; Eastern
to the soul, though the fantasies, the passions, the vulgarities, the
brilliant ineptitudes of the West beat about it like waves about some
unyielding wall of the sea.
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