ence, - he has finally lost his liberty, and is doomed now to drag on until the end the chains of gilded captivity in his splendid prison-palace of Emirghian on the Bosphorus shore.

To me it has always argued a grave deterioration of that keen, bright intellect that Ismail so unquestionably possessed, that he should have permitted himself to be tempted into a visit to Constantinople. He cannot have concealed from himself

younger days have essayed to confront them. Yet he went, not blindfold; he had before his eyes examples of what he must expect. There were already in and around Stamboul several bright birds of gaudy plumage, from Tunis, from Baghdad, and elsewhere though none so rare as he breaking their beaks against the gold bars of their cages, but knowing that their struggles were vain. Yet, despite all this, he ventured into the snare, and Europe will know him no more.

THERE is a tendency in this country among educated and liberal-minded people among people even who have followed the course of events in the world of politics during the past twenty years with close attention and an interest beyond the average to heap upon the shoulders of one man the primary blame for all that long 'ist of crushing misfortunes in Egypt its dangers. He would never in his which began with the ruinous concession for the Suez Canal and culminated in the death of Gordon at Khartoum. The mention of this man's name in conversation calls forth the stilted smile that greets an equivocal allusion, coupled with a headshake of reprobation of his manifold wickedness. Stories of his loose, dissolute life, his spoilt-child caprices, his wanton extravagances, and his reckless, unthinking expenditure, are in all our memories side by side with dark tales of his cruelties to a people already crushed to the earth beneath their burden; of extortions from a patient, starving peasantry, by the teeth of the scourge, of the means to gratify his unbridled passions; of treacheries to trusted friends, of unscrupulous use of hideous secret means for removing a foe whom he feared or making a place for a parasite whom he favored. To many minds, indeed, the worst types of Oriental tyranny and license engrafted with the ex-tration of his country in a condition of otic refinements of Western depravity are embodied in the person of Ismail Pasha.

It is no part of my present purpose to parade as the apologist of the ex-khedive. With the blame cast upon him, though much of it is unjust, I have nothing to do. It is my intention, indeed, to refer to him only in so far as his acts cannot be disas sociated from their consequences to his son. For himself, whatever be his faults, his vices, his criminality even, he has surely paid the penalty amply and in full. Shorn of all save the merest semblance of state, reft of all power, hurled from place, and robbed of fortune, of honors, of the opportunity for intrigue, and of that yet more precious possession, the joy of detecting and combating intrigue in others, which was the very essence of his exist

The reign of Ismail can be summed up in two well-known sentences: "Great expectations," "large deductions." It was essentially a reign of action. It teemed with mighty projects which were carried, many of them, to most successful issue, and if this result was invariably attained at stupendous, at crushing cost, the fault lay not entirely with the ex-khedive. On Ismail's accession, he found the adminis

chaotic decay. Nothing remained but the ruins of his grandfather's great work, and everything had to be begun afresh, and new life infused into the languishing undertakings of the founder of the dynasty. His father Ibrahim, Mehemet Ali's warrior son, one of the most attractive figures of his time, brave, upright, just — the sword-hand of the mighty man of Cavalla, the victor of Konieh, the vanquisher of Khosrew, who had swept like a flame through Syria and Arabia - had died leaving no trace upon the institutions of his country. His military genius was his title to fame, and the record of his battles was the record of his life. Yet he had proved himself in Syria so able an administrator that, had his life been prolonged, much of the history of Egypt might have

blandly, "Why open the eyes of the people? they will only be more difficult to rule." He was brave, though wanting in moral courage; he was well disposed to his family, to whom he restored their estates confiscated by Abbas; and he was recklessly generous. He paid for the decoration of one of the reception-rooms at Abdin Palace the enormous sum of ten million francs, and had so little sense of the worth of the money that when M. Bravais (who, by the way, was the original of Daudet's "Nabob ") complained that a certain estimate in Italian lire had been taken too low, he simply replied, "Well, put it in English livres," and it was done.

organized a new government for the five | Koenig Bey begged him to reopen the provinces then forming the Egyptian schools suppressed by Abbas, he replied Soudan i.e., Kordofan, Sennar, Taka, Berber, and Dongola. He ordered that the excessive taxes on the lands and on the water-wheels of the people should be discontinued, and he established postal services on dromedaries across the desert. That journey of Said from Cairo to Khartoum is still remembered, still talked of throughout the Soudan. I have heard of it at Halfa and at Dongola at Massauah, and at Senhiet, and at Suakim. At Dongola my head camel-driver and guide, a Tunisian bedawee, whose proud boast it was that he had accompanied the expedition, never tired of telling the glories of that triumphal progress, when Said, in a carriage-and-four, surrounded by an army of fifty thousand men, followed the bank of the Nile for nineteen hundred miles. The horrors of that terrific march, the fearful mortality of troops, the utter ruin of the populace after the passage of As a consequence of his commitments this devastating locust-flight, the tyranny, to the Suez Canal Company, amounting to the exactions that heralded its approach nearly £4,000,000, added to the pressure all are forgotten; only the bright mem- of a heavy floating debt, Said found himory remains of "the great pasha," bediz-self forced to saddle his country with a ened with gold, rolling in a carriage (the public loan and a public debt. In 1862 only wheeled vehicle ever seen in the country) over the broken rocks and through the drifting sands, and distributing smiles to the cowering villagers.

The anti-climax to Said's Soudan reforms came very soon. About the year 1860 the European traders sold their stations to their Arab agents, who paid rental to the Egyptian government. Then was the heyday of the djellabat (slave-dealers), of Zubehr Rahama and Suleiman his son, and the misery and ruin of the people was increased tenfold.

Said was in every way the reverse of Abbas. He was sociable, quick, witty, loving especially the society of foreigners - an agreeable conversationalist, speaking French like a Parisian, and enjoying of all things the intricate witticisms of which that language is capable. In common with all the members of the khedivial family he possessed a great sense of humor, and he was a wit of no mean order. Like Abbas he was no patron of public instruction. When one day his old tutor

Said's title to remembrance by posterity, however, and it forms my chief reason for mention of him, is in the fact that to him belongs the doubtful merit of having contracted the first Egyptian loan.

he concluded the first public loan in London, with Fruhling, Goschen, & Co. (in room of two private loans made previously in Paris). The amount was £3,292,800 at seven per cent., and one per cent. amortization, but it realized only two and a half millions, showing therefore a dead loss of £800,000 (which at eight per cent. represented a payment of £64,000, for money never seen). Having accomplished this, he died, and left to his successor a burden of ten millions of liability, three millions of which was foreign debt; a rotten administration, great disorder, and in addition the - for Egypt-disastrous Suez Canal concession, with all its ruinous and mischievous obligations. This concession, by the way, it is freely asserted, M. de Lesseps easily persuaded him to sign, without even having read it. This, doubtless his worst act, was one of which he never appeared to comprehend the gravity; for though when near death he freely expressed regret that he had burdened his country with a public debt and loan,

he showed no contrition for saddling pathy of her sister wives was still further his nephew with the burden of millions, alienated by the fact that they immediately to come against which he had merely began to bear sons) met for long years advanced £100,000 towards preliminary with but scant courtesy at the hands, and in the palaces, of her lord. On the other hand her title as fourth wife was unassailable, and though Ismail disliked her, she could not be put aside.

expenses.

When Mehemet Tewfik was born, the very title of khedive was still lacking to the dignity of the governors of Egypt. Recognition of the right of his family to When, shortly after the death of his hereditary succession in the post of wali elder brother Ahmed, Ismail succeeded to of that pashalik had indeed, twelve years the viceregal throne, his first undertaking before, been wrested by Mehemet Ali's was to obtain, at any cost, by the emstern determination from the Porte, and ployment of any means in his power, the despite Lord Palmerston's strenuous op- alteration of the succession so that the position, had been grudgingly ratified by khedivial title should descend from father Europe. The suzerain rights which re- to son. This had been the dream of Memained to the Caliph-ul-Islam were still hemet Ali's life, the great object for which being gradually transferred, for adequate he had vainly struggled, and which the considerstion, to the de facto ruler. The short-sightedness of Europe had wantonly final assertion, indeed, of the almighty prerogatives of the sovereign power at Stamboul, may be said to have found its expression in the removal of Abbas by that time-honored Oriental instrument, the silken cord. This was at a time when Tewfik was still a pet of the harem, and his father Ismail - then not even heirpresumptive was simply a wealthy country gentleman, occupied exclusively with agriculture and the administration of his extensive properties. (He possessed at this time an income of about £160,000 per annum in land on which there were no debts and no mortgages.)

On the 15th of November, 1852- that is to say, eleven years before he became viceroy of Egypt-a slave in the household of Ismail Pasha presented him with a son. She was not, properly speaking, one of the ladies of his harem. She was, indeed, a peasant girl, employed in some quite menial capacity in the establishment. But it chanced, first, that her master had at the time but three wives - one short of the number prescribed by Mohammedan law - and secondly, that none of these ladies was at the time the mother of a living male child. Sons had been born to them, indeed, but had not survived, and in Moslem households female children are of no account. The healthy child of the fellah slave-girl, therefore, was Ismail's eldest son, and the mere fact of his birth gave his mother a right to the vacant position of fourth wife. It is not too much to say that Ismail, who had regarded the little love affair wholly in the light of an episode, was vastly chagrined by the occurrence. He was in no hurry to concede to the lady the privilege which was her just due, and as a result this modern Hagar (from whom, no doubt, the sym

frustrated. Ismail was shrewd enough to see that the constant change of the viceroyalty from one branch of the family to another was inevitably fatal to the establishment of any stable government. But it is probable that his detestation of the prince, who in due course might succeed him, did even more to stimulate his effort than did his love of his country. According to the old law of succession, Prince Halim, youngest son of Mehemet Ali, was heir-presumptive to his nephew; next to him Prince Osman, eldest son of Moustapha Fazil; after him Prince Ibrahim, son of Ismail's elder brother Ahmed; and finally Tewfik. Thus no one gained more by the alteration of the law than Tewfik himself, who from fourth in order became first with, moreover, succession secured to his children, who would otherwise have had but a very remote chance of ever succeeding. But it may be believed that it was with no thought of the despised Tewfik in his mind that Ismail lavished money and promises in Stamboul to achieve his purpose. His second and favorite wife, the Princess Djenajar, had given him a son, Ibrahim Hilmy Pasha, on whom he had fixed his hopes as a successor. This second princess it was, indeed, who conducted with consummate ability many of the delicate inter-harem negotiations in Constantinople, which were finally to secure her husband's object. She would hardly have thus labored for the benefit of the son of the outcast fourth princess.

What may have been the money price of Ismail's success is not accurately known. It has been asserted that in actual cash he had to spend three millions sterling in Stamboul, and when he was asked by a friend if this estimate was not

an enormous exaggeration, he answered laconically, "It was not less." Certainly on his first visit to Constantinople his overtures were very coolly received, and all he was able to obtain by means of a present of £50,000 to the grand vizier was a hatt granting him permission to make certain financial arrangements without first submitting them to the Porte. But he was not to be discouraged. He put in force his favorite adage, “Les petits cadeaux entretiennent l'amitié, et les grands l'augmentent." At last he obtained a decisive audience; £900,000 in gold placed at the feet of his Majesty secured a most favorable reception, and on the 9th June, 1866, a firman altered the succession. Yet at the last moment he saw his primary object | defeated. When it became necessary to name the future ruler of Egypt, both Porte and powers insisted that the change should be in favor of the eldest son, and Ismail was forced to submit. The firman, after settling the succession in tail male by order of primogeniture and providing for a regency, recognized the complete autonomy of the khedive in all internal matters, and gave him the right to bestow military grades as high as colonel and civil grades as high as bey. It moreover authorized him to contract loans without permission, to enter into commercial or other treaties with foreign powers as long as they did not interfere with the political treaties of the Sublime Porte, and also empowered him to increase his army and navy.

Thus Tewfik again unconsciously triumphed, a circumstance which did not tend to strengthen his father's affection for him. But though he disliked his son, Ismail, having submitted to the inevitable, at once adopted steps to have him treated in accordance with his new position. He took, it is true, no special trouble about his education. Other sons were sent to Paris, to Oxford, to Woolwich, but Tewfik remained at home. On one occasion, when eighteen years of age, he had obtained a tardy and ungracious permission to make a European tour, but the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, when he had as yet barely reached Vienna, caused him to be at once recalled. This indeed was the only visit paid by Tewfik to Europe during his life. His father, however, established him in fitting state in a palace at Koubeh, near Cairo, gave him an allowance of £30,000 a year, and, when the time came, in 1872 married him appropriately to Amina Hanoum, a daughter of El Hamy Pasha, another great-grandson of Mehemet Ali.

For five years after his marriage Tewfik's life was altogether uneventful. Very simple, even homely, in all his tastes and pursuits, he lived entirely on his estate, devoting himself to agriculture, and acquired the reputation of being a juster landlord and more lenient master than generally rules the destinies of the Egyptian fellah. He hated all parade, loved his home, and showed himself to be an excellent husband and father, in the fullest European sense of the terms. He was utterly unknown outside of his neighborhood, and his homely life and serious occupations drew down upon him the undisguised contempt of his more polished brothers, who lived and shone in the brilliant European society that Ismail loved to gather around him. Tewfik's serious turn of mind found a useful field of activity, when he was but two-and-twenty, in the education of the young. In his palace of Koubeh he founded, at his own expense, a school for orphans and for sons of officers. This institution, which he maintained at a cost of £4,600 a year, was organized on the model of Continental schools for cadets, great attention being given to the bodily development of the students. Some one hundred and twenty pupils, whose ages varied from ten to twenty, received a capital education under conscientious and painstaking masters in the establishment, which Tewfik was in the habit of visiting almost every day.

His interest in this foundation abated somewhat-though he continued to maintain it-after his accession. He then founded, or rather revived, the Ali school opposite the Abdin Palace, where his two sons, Abbas (the present khedive) and Mehemet Ali, were primarily educated, with about a hundred boys, the sons of princes and pashas. In this school, although it is only intended for the children of the rich, education is gratuitous, the khedive providing everything, including uniforms and a somewhat luxurious table. Within its walls perfect equality prevails, and the sons of the khedive were treated exactly like the other boys. It was significant of the state of feeling in the country on the subject of education when Tewfik opened this school, that, notwithstanding the fact that he placed his own sons in the establishment, and that he paid for everything, he had almost to employ force to obtain the number of students he had provided for.

Tewfik would have been well content to prolong this life of quiet well-doing had events permitted. His enemies, who were