important article of furniture is the Furn.
That is a kind of permanent bedstead, built
of brick, and containing an arched stove.
This provides warmth in winter, and it is
the cooking-place. The whole family sleeps
sometimes, in cold weather, on the furn,
which being fed with dung fuel, is maintained
all night at a gentle heat. There are no chairs
and tables, of course; but there is sometimes
a dish-stand a few inches high, and there are
a few earthen dishes, bowls, and water-jars.
This dwelling has low doors, and windows
about six inches square.

The fellah is apt to play the master in his
household, as the master is played to himself
out of doors. A great part of the land of
Egypt belongs as estate to the Pacha and a
few great landed proprietors, who farm it
out. The people go with the soil: each
peasant has a small allotment which he
cultivates when he is able, but the man who
farms the estate on which he lives has a
right to his labour, and the giving of wages
is often merely optional. In money, or kind,
or personal service, the Egyptian villager
is made to pay back ninety-five per cent.
upon the produce of his labour.

For this plunge into the Nile and gossip
upon Village Life in Egypt, we are indebted
altogether to the pleasant book of Mr. Bayle
St. John. We pay our thanks to him accordingly.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MADIAI.

HAVING received permission from the
Tuscan Secretary of State to visit the Madiai
in the prisons where they are severally
expiating their enormous crime of possessing a
Bible, we determined to take the husband
first in order, for, by a refinement of cruelty,
they are confined in separate prisons, in
different parts of the country.

Francesco Madiai is confined in Volterra,
a desolate town situated on a bleak hill in
the midst of the Tuscan Maremme, but to
the antiquary full of interest for its Etruscan
remains, and to the lover of art as being the
centre and place of manufacture for those
alabaster ornaments which – from the tame
and insipid snow-white baskets of the
chimney-piece of a ladies' academy, to the
classic vases of agate-alabaster in the cabinet
of the connoisseur – are found as ornaments
in almost every country.

Volterra may be approached from Florence
on two sides, either by Poggiabonsi or by
Pontadera; we were recommended the latter
as an easier, though longer road.

Having taken our places by the railway
from Florence, amid the parting smiles of an
old flower-girl – who, as she forced her
carnations upon us, tried to infuse into those
smiles something of the sweetness of younger
days – we steamed along, at some sixteen miles
an hour, as far as Pontadera. Here, after
refusing the invitation of a voluble vetturino
to be conducted to the now deserted lakes
of Montecatino, we effected an arrangement
for Volterra at a price about the half of what
he asked, and probably twice as much as he
expected. The road was unexceptionable:
such as we Englishmen are in the habit of
assuming to be peculiar to MacAdam and
ourselves. When seven miles from Volterra
in distance, and two hours in time, the town
with its fortress was seen crowning the heights,
and apparently quite near at hand. From
this point the whole route presented the
wildest scene of desolation, as the soil
consists of a cold white clay on which not a
blade of verdure will grow, and which rain
and torrents have worn away into romantic
shapes, leaving the upper surface bare
and full of cracks. The whole country, as
far as the eye can see, has such an appearance
as one might imagine the earth to
have presented when the Deluge first
subsided.

Under the walls of the town, we overtook
a party of holiday-making "artists" in
alabaster, and were told that, by accompanying
them up a steep foot-path to the left, we
should arrive half-an-hour before our
carriage, which had to wind its way up the
zigzags.

Arrived at the hotel, our landlord made
much boast of "some Englishmen" who had
been "staying for the last month with him."
This turned out to be a true Samaritan who,
with his son, had devoted all that time to
cheering the sinking spirits, strengthening
the drooping mind, and enlivening the solitary
hours, of the poor prisoner we came to
see.

As our time was limited, and we could not
visit the prison before ten next morning,
we arranged for an early inspection of
the Etruscan remains in the Museum, being
the most perfect collection of tombs (some
of them, probably, but little later than the
time of Abraham) that exists in Europe. It
would be foreign from our subject to detail the
treasures of this striking collection; but we
may pause to notice one singular custom,
which, if now adopted, would cause a complete
revolution in epitaphs. Many of the older
tombs represent, in the sculptured relief with
which all are decorated, the passage of the
soul to its destined state for the future. The
spirit of the departed is mounted on horse-
back, and led on either by a good angel to
realms of bliss, or by a bad spirit, with a
huge hammer over his shoulder, to the place
of torment. We could well fancy the
embarrassment that would be experienced by
the surviving relations in deciding so
important a point as the nature of the
entablature, and what a convincing and permanent
proof it would afford of their opinion of the
departed. In one instance, a departed spirit,
whose horse, urged on by the bad angel, is
conducting him at full speed to the regions of
torment, is represented as pulling hard at