In this country, at this time, cats have superseded parlor favorites decidedly less agreeable in their appearance, and infinitely more mischievous in their habits. Writing in the seventeenth century, Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, remarks that "Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else, beside their household business or to play with their children, to drive away time but to dally with their cats, which they have _in delitiis_, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs." It is not the least merit of the cat that it has banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of humanity--the monkey tribe; and as to the little dogs Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, although we are not insensible to their many virtues and utilities, we care not to see them sleeping on our hearth-rugs, or reposing beside our work-tables.
[19] In the matter of fanaticism, the modern Egyptians, or rather the inhabitants of Alexandria, seem hardly to have degenerated from their ethnic "forbears" as we read in Mr. J. A. St. John's travels the account of a serious insurrection which broke out some years ago in that city, in consequence of certain Jews having taken up the butchers' trade, and having slain the meat with a knife having _three_ instead of _five nails_ in the handle!
There was a wild storm out at sea--a storm by night--the winds and the waves had begun to lift up their voices just when the tumult of the world was hushed in the silent darkness, so that on the earth all was tranquillity, while the ocean raged in fury: it was as though that spirit of unrest which haunts the hearts of men, having been driven out of them by the charm of sleep, had taken refuge here among the boiling waters, and prepared to hold a frantic revel. The mad sea was a fitting field for such a guest, and the fierce sport they made together seemed designed for a mocking imitation of the stormy human passions, which convulsed the land by day.
There was a mimic war in heaven--the thunder, for artillery, and the shock of the electric clouds, like the meeting armies when fellow-mortals do battle for destruction; then the beautiful lightning was as the flashing hopes that gleam in at times on the darkness of the soul, and often blast it in the passing of their fatal brightness. The waves leapt, and rose, and sunk to rise no more, like men wrestling for happiness and finding a grave, and over as the tempest swept by the rain went with it, wildly weeping, as though its big, bursting drops were the frantic tears of an earthly despair.