ii6 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

quality amidst Oriental Princes, and its recognition seems to me to account for the kindly feeling which always actuated Nubar in speaking of the Prince, who, but for his madness and his premature death, might have left a name in Egyptian history not unworthy of Mahomet Ali's favourite son and heir.

These anecdotes serve also to explain the training which Nubar received during the years when a young man's character is formed. He was taught early to act for himself, to trust to his own intelligence, to fight his own battles, and to be confident in his power of moulding others to his will by force of his superior capacity. After Ibrahim's death, he was employed in various official capacities under both Abbas and Said.

One of his earliest functions was that of being appointed to make arrangements with a British postoffice agent for the conveyance of the Indian mails by the overland route from Alexandria to Suez. The agent selected was my old friend Anthony Trollope, who, though he had already begun writing novels, was still a clerk at St. Martins-le-Grand. Again, after the retirement of Mr. Green, the brother of our then Consul- General at Cairo, from the position of manager of the State railways, Nubar was appointed to a post whose duties brought him into contact, and not unfrequently into conflict, with European residents and visitors, and especially with the English members of the Alexandrian community.

Whether at any time he was a model administrator, I should doubt, from my own observation ; but