THE ACCESSION OF ABBAS II. 471 natives, who have still to pay for the improvements by which Ismail transformed Cairo into an European capital, may perhaps not realize the advantage of this transformation. The English visitors, however, who enjoy in Cairo all the comforts and luxuries of a wealthy European city, are. ungrateful if they fail to remember that the new Cairo is the creation of the first of the Khedives, and that to him, more than to any other single individual, England owes the commanding position she now occupies in the valley of the Nile.