THE EVACUATION OF THE SOUDAN. 337 way you will get what you want done ; and if your demand is just, the Turk will in the end respect you for having made it."

The moral of this advice Sir Evelyn Baring has taken to heart in all his long and successful career in Egypt. I have often heard him criticized for an absence of that suavity of manner, which is supposed to be one of the special accomplishments of diplomats ; but I am convinced that the sometimes almost brutal frankness with which he was wont to express his views and to give advice, between which and an order there was a distinction without a difference, did more than the subtlest diplomacy could have effected to render his position in Egypt similar to that of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in Turkey. I am not sure whether he would have been equally successful in a country where his authority had been less restricted. His strong common sense enabled him to realize the truth, which so many of our Anglo-Indian officials who have taken service in Egypt seem apt to overlook, that, after all, Egypt is not India, and that the British official has not got behind him in the former country the same immediate support of an all-powerful Government as he has in the latter. Our Consul-General is ov\y primus inter pares as compared with the representatives of the other Great Powers at Cairo. He has to carry out his policy by the instrumentality of a native Administration, which at heart is indifferent, if not hostile to, the ideas on which that policy is based. To effect his end, he z