THE ACCESSION OF ISMAIL PASHA, 51 well administered to promote its productiveness Moreover, though he was prepared to sacrifice anything, and anybody, to his own aggrandizement and enrichment, he was good-humoured, if not goodnatured, and ws free from the \}}<t, of fmpli-y so common amidst Oriental rulers. ' He had picked ifp a sort of European veneer. He believed himself, not altogether without cause, to be greatly superior in intelligence to the run of Oriental princes. He ajfected the society of foreigners. Hfispokfi-Erench fluendy, though inaccurately; he__cfiuldJthQUgli.with difficulty, make himself junderstood iyi English. He was desirous, not only as a matter of policy, but of individual predilection, to stand well in the public opinion o£ Europe ; (and all these motives confirmed hiswish to earn the repute of an enlightened Sovereign, whose £ule__ however autocratic, was_directed to the development and improvement of _the country over. which he had been called to reign. In an able summary of Egyptian history, published in England as late as 1877, the character of Ismail Pasha is thus summed up : '' A man of undoubted ability, possessed of unusual energy in administration, fully appreciative of the importance of Western civilization, fired with the ambition proper to the grandson of Mahomet AH, the Khedive is a ruler such as Egypt has scarcely seen since the Arab conquest."

I confess it is difficult for me to comprehend that this estimate could have been formed as late as the year following the Cave Mission. But if it had been