Not all the Hebrews are employed in the field. It has of late years been a fashion with the nobles, governors, and chief captains of Egypt to have the young captives of both sexes as servants near their persons; their beauty, activity, and trustfulness rendering these Syrian youths particularly fitted for this domestic employment. Thus, I have seen Hebrew pages attending on lords and ladies in their palaces, and Hebrew maidens acting as personal attendants upon the mistress of the family. These young foreigners soon become favorites, and are rewarded for their devotion and usefulness by rich dresses and jewels, which last they all especially delight in, and wear in great quantities. The Egyptians, also, lavishly display them on their fingers, in their ears, and upon their necks. Every lord wears a large signet, on which is carved his _cartouch_, or shield of arms. To present this to any friend is a mark of the highest confidence and honor. Such an expression of regard, you will remember, the Prince Remeses bestowed upon me. With it I shall seal this letter, that you may see its designs in the hieroglyph representation.
The queen has three Hebrew pages, noble and princely-looking boys, with fine, sparkling, black eyes, and intelligent faces; but there is a fixed air of pensiveness about them all, which is perhaps the result of hereditary oppression. This pensive look I have remarked in Prince Remeses, whose style of face is very strongly Syriac or Hebraic. Indeed, I have seen an old Hebrew bondman, a gardener in the palace garden, by the name of Amram, who is so strikingly like the prince that I can easily see by him, how Remeses himself will look at eighty years of age. But this Syriac countenance of Remeses comes from his grandmother, Ephtha, the daughter of the last Phœnician Pharaoh; yet it is marvellous he has about him nothing of the Egyptian type. The Egyptian or Nilotic race, have a sharp and prominent face, in which a long and straight, or gently aquiline nose forms a principal part. The eye is sometimes oblique; the chin short and retracted; the lips rather full and tumid, so to speak; and the hair, when it is suffered to escape the razor in times of mourning, long and flowing. The head is elongated upward, with a receding forehead. The profile is delicate, rather than strong. This style of features and head is strictly Egyptian, and pertains to every class, from Amense on the throne to the priests and people. I see it sculptured on all the tombs and monuments, and carved on the most ancient sarcophagi. The head of Horus is but a sublimer modification of this type.