(From a Correspondent.)
The accompanying sketch represents a sequestered spot of sylvan shade whence rises a Spring which tradition designates Queen Anne's. Here the limpid crystal flows in gentle, yet ceaseless streams, conveying "Health to the sick and solace to the swain."
It has some claims to antiquity; and its merits have been appreciated by royalty. Queen Anne was the first august personage who had recourse to it; in later times, Queen Charlotte for many years had the pure element conveyed to her royal abode at Windsor, and in 1785, a stone, with a cipher and date, was placed there by her illustrious consort, George III. This spring is situate at Chalvey, (a village between Eton and Salt Hill,) on the property of J. Mason, Esq., Cippenham. It was the observation of the esteemed and celebrated Dr. Heberdeen, that it but required a physician to write a treatise on the water, to render it as efficacious as Malvern.
URANIA.
Spirit Of The Public Journals.
STATE OF MAGIC IN EGYPT, BY AN EYE-WITNESS.
At the Consul General's table, in Egypt, in August, 1822, the conversation turned on the belief in magic; and the Consul's Italian Staff propounded the following story, which seemed to have perfect possession of their best belief. They said that a magician of great name was then in Cairo—I think a Mogrebine; and that he had been sent for to the Consul's house, and put to the following proof:—A silver spoon had been lost, and he was invited to point out the thief. On arriving, he sent for an Arab boy at hazard out of the street, and after various ceremonies, poured ink into the boy's hand, into which the boy was to look. It was stated, that he asked the boy what he saw, and the boy answered, "I see a little man,"—Tell him to bring a flag,—"Now he has brought a flag."—Tell him to bring another.—"Now he has brought another."—Tell him to bring a third,—"Now he has brought it."—Tell him to bring a fourth.—"He has brought it."—Tell him to bring the captain of them all.—"I see a great Sheik on horseback."—Tell him to bring the man that stole the spoon.—"Now he has brought him."—What is he like?—"He is a Frangi, poor-looking and mesquin." After which followed other points of personal description not remembered; but which drew from the Staff the observation, that a European of exactly those qualities had been about the house. We expressed our desire to be introduced to the magician, and the Consul gravely intimated it might hurt the prejudices of his wife, as being a Catholic; to the great mirth of the beautiful Consuless when she was told of it, who, though a Catholic and an Italian, declared she was the only person in the family that set all the magicians in Egypt at defiance.
Having some time afterwards established ourselves in a house of our own, on the edge of the garden of the Austrian Consulate (as I remember by the token that a Turkish officer who had been taking his evening walk of meditation, very gravely opened the window from the garden, put in first one leg of his huge trousers and then the other, and strode into the room followed by his pipe-bearer, as being the shortest cut into the street; though I must do him the justice to say he laughed and was very conversable, when I brought him up with a salam and a cup of coffee, by way of demonstrating there was somebody in the house besides the Arab owner), we sent for the magician. I remember a well-dressed personable man, of what, after the fashion of the nomenclature in the Chamber of Deputies, might be called the young middle-age. He agreed to show us a specimen of his art, though I do not recollect that the nature of it was defined. He fixed upon our little boy of seven years old to be his instrument; and I remember he talked some nonsense about requiring an innocent agent, and how a woman might do as well, if she could plead the innocent presence of the unborn. He dispatched a servant into the bazar, to procure frankincense and other things which he directed; and on their being produced we all retired into a room, and closed the doors and windows. An earthen pot was placed in the middle of the floor, containing fire, and the magician sat down by it. He placed the little boy before him, and poured ink into the hollow of the boy's hand, and bid him look into it steadily. I think the mother rather quailed, at seeing her child in such propinquity with "the Enemy;" but recovered herself on being exhorted to defy the devil and all his works. And the thing was not entirely without danger from another quarter; for it was understood the Pasha had directed a special edict against all dealing with familiar spirits; and the Pasha's edicts were not altogether to be trifled with, as we knew from the mishap of a poor Indian servant, who was caught in the bazar in the fact of taking thirteen of the Pasha's tin piasters in change for a dollar, when the political economy of Cairo had decreed that twelve were to be equal in public estimation, and was immediately incarcerated in the place of skulls, or at least of heads, from which it is supposed he would have come out shorn of his beard and the chin it grew from, if the Consular cocked hat and Abyssinian charger had not proceeded at a gallop to the Court at Shubra, to claim him as a subject of the British crown; and much did poor Baloo vow, that no earthly temptation should take him again to quit the gentle rule of the old Lady in Leadenhall-street, who, though she pinches a Peishwa and mercilessly screws a renter when it suits her, it must be allowed has a reverent care for the heads of all her lieges, and gives them a fair chance of going to their graves with the members nature had bestowed on them.