The world has been startled by the announcement of the
French telegraph—not the most trustworthy authority, perhaps—that MEHEMET ALI has abdicated the Pachalic of Egypt and retired to Mecca. Some suppose that he is stricken religious in his old age; others, that his retirement to Mecca is merely colourable, and that he abdicates living only that he may with his own eyes see the succession duly secured to his son ; and newer accounts represent it as some inexplicable act of passion. There is nothing improbable in a mixture of such motives. Old free-spoken lax remarks to BURCKHARDT, about his orthodoxy, are quoted to show that the Pacha has been a free-thinker ; and be has also been a man of robust constitution : but your free-thinker, especially if his scepti- cism is the result of heedlessness rather than of logical inquiry, is sometimes made more reflective and imaginative by the near ap- proach of death ; and none is more troubled and dismayed at the sen- sations of decaying powers than the robust. It has been report- ed, not very long ago, in Alexandria, that MEHEMET ALI was very unwell; and that he was uneasy at the prediction of an astrologer that he would die at some fixed time, now, we believe, overpassed. He may be moved, drawing near to the region of the grave, to pro- pitiate the powers at which he scoffed when distant : but the tenacity of the "ruling passion" is proverbial; and all the while he may cast, a back regard, and intend from his religious seclusion to keep an eye upon his reigning son. In that case he would doubly emulate CHARLES the Fifth—in his retirement, and in his hankering after the relinquished excitements of political power. Nor is he likely to have a more tractable son. If num.'s gloomy fanaticism covered a strong mundane obstinacy, the de- bauched Lutanist Pacha is not more likely to study the behests of an eremitical parent. Our chief concern in the matter is the share Egypt is likely to have in any European war. It is said, apocryphally enough, that we have guaranteed the succession by a new treaty : but even if that be true, such a stipulation is "neither here nor there " : if France and England were at war, Egypt is a field that one would occupy, and therefore the other must too, whatever the pretext; and we may remember that front the time of Sr. Louis to NAPOLEON, France has not prospered in Egyptian expeditions — the six centuries perched up upon the Pyramids did not witness the most complete victories of French arms.
