112 — Khedive. Nor was he unworthy to bear the burden of both. That he dealt in slaves may once more be admitted : but this fact should not be allowed to obtrude itself so much into the foreground as to hide his many and excellent qualities. He may not have been a paragon of virtue but he was not an epitome of all the vices. Faults he may have had he was but human—yet we cannot but admire the pluck that conquered, and the ability that held the vast country he brought beneath his sway.

A just discrimination, while it may disapprove of much that Zubeir did, should equally approve the omission of much that he might have done. If, in the hour of triumph, he withheld the destroying sword, and refrained from exacting the full toll ot the victor, this should be put to his credit, and this should be remembered when he is brought before the bar of impartial enquiry. That the blood of so many innocent victims stains his hands was due far more to the accident of his calling, than to the fact that he deliberately set before himself the prosecution of a cruel and bloodthirsty project.

And here we may take leave of Zubeir before the tide of his influence is on the ebb, or the sun of his glory has set. An obscure Arab trader from an unknown village on the banks of the Nile he won his waj' through perilous undertakings and hasardous enterprises, through slave-raiding to sovereignity, from