His highness Ismail pasha (From a Photograph taken in 1867).

considerable administrative experience in Egypt, suc-

ceeded his uncle SaidPasha in 1863. Admittedto be the ablest son ofIbrahimPasha, Ismail wasessentiallya firmruler both of his Egyptian dominions and of the Soudan; added to which he possessed the valuable- faculty of selecting able instruments of his policy, as

was evidenced by his choosing for proconsuls in the Soudantwo such remarkable men as Sir Samuel Baker andGeneralGordon.

stated tohaverecommended Colonel Gordon to his High- ness, and there certainly could not have been a better choice. The Khedive and his new representative in the Soudan were wellcoupled. IsmailPasha wasunquestion- ably a vigorousSovereign. As Mr. J.C. McCoan, M.P., has remarkedinhis recentpamphlet on"The Egyptian Problem,"— "he was absolutely the only man in the

country withthe strongheadand thefirmhandindispens- able to its government. Duringnearly seventeenyears

he hadruled it as a colonel rules his regiment, making his personal influence felt through everybranch of the public service, andgiving at least order and strength to

the whole. His thinly-veiled ambition wasto realize the grand idea of Mehemet Ali— -the re-erection of Egypt into anindependentArabkingdom— not,indeed, by force of arms, but of European civilizationgrafted on such elements of national life as had survivedthe revolutions and the oppression ofmore than a thousand years."

The Soudan was neverso wellgoverned as it wasunder the Khedive Ismail, who was born in Cairoin 1830, and after receiving a sound education at Paris, and acquiring

Sir Samuel Baker has more than once expressedthe opinion that hadthe KhediveIsmail remainedin power all the Soudan provinces would have been developedby degrees under his energetic rule, and with this result, that Egypt, instead of having, as at present, a weak frontierat Wady Haifa and Assouan,couldhave secured a strong onein the line of the White Nile. Theannual pecuniary sacrifice which the administration of the Soudan involved,and which need have been only tem- porary,is now seen to have been of insignificant con- sequence incomparison withso manifestan advantage. "The slave trade is ingrained in the bones of the

b i