a strong evidence of this: and we may see another in the temper and prudence with which he conducted himself after the new arrangement of his relations with the Porte which deprived him of Syria. On the whole, he was pronounced to be French in his leanings; and the French official world assumed this as an established fact. Some frightened Englishmen insisted, abroad and at home, that the French would thenceforward appropriate more and more rapidly the whole north of Africa, and bar our passage to India by Egypt. The jealousy and wrath that were raging at Alexandria and Cairo when I was there exceeded any such manifestation as I ever witnessed in the Slave States of America, or anywhere else. It must be understood that the consuls-general of England and France were far above this. They were sincerely cordial, while each aware that the interests of coming generations might hang on the decisions, the policy, and the conduct of the old Pasha and his immediate successor.
They were aware of this: but they little anticipated the changes that were close at hand. Within two years, Ibrahim Pasha was in his grave; the King of the French and his family were exiles from their country; Mehemet Ali was dead; and Abbas was the ruler of Egypt. No doubt the people mourned the overthrow of their hope that they should be ruled by a Pasha of their own colour; but they had to weep in secret. They had, to be sure, a ruler who abundantly hated foreigners. Abbas was as eager to run away from the European Consuls as his villagers had been to hide from him: but what the people of Egypt dislike is not foreign merchants, or travellers, or ambassadors, but a Greek race to reign over them. Thus, nobody seemed glad of Abbas. The Consuls could get no business done, even though they wooed him with sports, and humoured his tastes. His own officers of state were in constant perplexity, from his evasion of affairs; and, from time to time, the merchants, the townspeople, and the peasantry were thrown into panic or rage by some illicit act of power,—some trick played with corn, or duties, or with the rights of the peasants. He is probably remembered in England chiefly by his having helped us to the hippopotamus, and by the horse-races which he set up under the Pyramids. It may be remembered, too, how he latterly vanished almost entirely from sight. He had more and more frequently been found inaccessible when business was urgent, and absent in the desert when the mails were expected; and at length he vanished. There was some report put about of a valuable discovery of coal near Mount Sinai, which the Pasha was gone to see about; but he never reappeared, and we have heard no more of the coal. It is believed that he led a life of debauchery in the palace he had built for himself in the Arabian desert, and that he died in consequence. A fit of apoplexy was the alleged form of death: but it will always be said in Egypt that he was murdered. Perhaps some of us may remember his son, who had just then arrived in England. We may remember his splendid yacht, and the state which surrounded him, and the wonderful reports of his wealth, and the speculations as to whether French influence would win him over to the scheme of the Suez canal,—the innocent supposition being that this El Hhami Pasha would succeed his father, whose life was not expected to be long. The youth knew better. We cannot have forgotten the tale of how the news of that apoplectic fit arrived on board the yacht, and how it completely overwhelmed the young prince, who was carried to his cabin in convulsions of grief. He knew his own case, if his father’s career closed thus early; and so did every servant in his train. There was no more homage for him. His dream of greatness was over, after being held much more confidently than the sons of Ibrahim could ever have held theirs. We have since heard of him by his debts, his lavish waste of his vast wealth, and his early death.
He found in the seat of power when he returned his father’s uncle, who had been postponed to Abbas because he was younger. Said Pasha was the youngest son of Mehemet Ali, by a Circassian mother,—and so far, not favoured by the prepossessions of his Egyptian subjects. I need not describe him or his reign,—his reign of eight years which, in Egypt, looks almost like stability. His term of power has been long enough to give a fair chance to the French for their great scheme; and Said Pasha is understood to have imperilled his private affairs by his great advances and engagements on behalf of the project. Whenever the impracticability of the enterprise should become unconcealable, it was certain that the failure would be ascribed to some accident of the time; and it is probable that the world will be asked to believe henceforth that there is no Suez canal because Said Pasha died at a critical juncture. But the real object has for some time been attained. A French military colony is established in Egypt, and French officials have acquired a great influence over the native inhabitants. The fact is, Said was less shrewd than his old father, while far more highly educated. He knew less of the soil on which the experiment was to be tried, and more of the European way of viewing the advantages of a ship-passage to India, without appreciating the difficulties. His French training exposed him to a too ready sympathy with French enthusiasm and ambition; and hence the embarrassment to his private fortune which caused some anxiety about the safety of the public revenue. We know by what we saw and heard of him last year how lavish his method of expenditure is. We remember his pleasant bearing at Liverpool and elsewhere, and are, no doubt, grateful to him for his promises about an augmented and ever-increasing supply of cotton from the Nile valley. There was a time when we should have placed first in his series of good deeds his interdict on slavery, along the whole valley of the Nile, and wherever his frontiers extended; but there was more and more evidence of hollowness in this boasted reform as time passed on; and now the last transaction of his life has cast a dense gloom of disreputableness on the whole pretension. The transportation of some hundreds of negro soldiers, by mixed fraud and force, to Mexico, for the convenience of the Emperor of the French, is a deplorable act to be the last, or the latest known,