ISMAIL IN HIS GRANDEUR / Inauguration of Suez Canal — Concourse of visitors to Egypt — Ismail pays cost of their entertainment — Construction of road to Pyramids — The corvee at work — Lavish magnificence of the inaugural ceremonies — Extraordinary repute of Ismail at this period — From Ismailia to Chislehurst.

I SUSPECT, if the truth could be known, that, before the opening of the Suez Canal — the climax of Ismail's short-lived grandeur — the black quarter of an hour of Rabelais, had begun to make its approach manifest.

It may have been partly a desire to bolster up his financial repute which induced the Khedive to inaugurate the completion of this great work with a prodigal lavishness worthy of the supposed owner of Aladdin's lamp. But though such a desire may have confirmed him in his purpose, nothing, if my view of his character is correct, could have enabled him to resist the temptation afforded by an unparalleled opportunity for displaying himself before the world as an enlightened Sovereign, as the champion of progress, as the founder of a new dynasty destined to restgre to Egypt all, and more than all, the glories of her past.