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flag-officers suggested an instant distribution of their shares of the prizes, and Sandwich unwisely assented. He and Penn claimed for themselves goods to the value of £4000 apiece. Some of the officers, however, refused to accept what was offered them, and speedily Sandwich was involved in a grave scandal. He defended himself with all the pride and asperity of his temper. Bitterly did he resent the charge of embezzlement. "The truth is," said he, "not one jot of the dividend was distributed nor any order made (as appears by the date of it) until His Majesty and His Royal Highness had been acquainted with the separation of these goods, and approved thereof." The controversy is old and confused; and though we need not condemn Sandwich too fiercely, there is no doubt that his reputation received a stain which was not wholly washed away save by the waters of Solebay. Pepys, whose shrewd mind understood Sandwich, as it understood all his great contemporaries, summed up the case in a few lines: "The great evil of this year," he wrote at the end of 1665, "and the only one, indeed, is the fall of my Lord Sandwich, whose mistake about the prizes hath undone him. ... Indeed, his miscarriage about the prize-goods is not to be excused, to suffer a company of rogues to go away with ten times as much as himself, and the blame of all to be deservedly laid upon him."

Though for a while he fell under a cloud of disgrace, Sandwich did not cease serve his country. He suoceeded Fanshaw at Madrid, and presently went upon a mission to Tangier. But it was not until the Third Dutch War, in 1672, that he rejoined the fleet, and then with the deepest misgivings. "Though he was Vice Admiral of England, and Admiral of the Narrow Seas," said he at Lord Burlington's, "yet he knew no more of what was to be done that summer than any one of them, or any other that knew nothing of it; 'This only I know,' he said, 'that I will die, and these two boys (meaning Harbord and Cotterel) will die with me.'" His dislike of the war was compensated in a measure by the enthusiasm wherewith the fleet received him, and in the battle of Solebay, one of the fiercest in our annals, Sandwich had a golden opportunity of vindicating his courage. He seized it with all the vigour and impetuosity that were his. Unwieldy as he was, he fought with the energy of youth. The fight which Sandwich's ship, the Royal James, fought against two Dutchmen, one of them commanded by the intrepid Van Brakel, who raided Chatham, will be for ever memorable. She escaped the Groot Hollandia, only to be grappled by a fireship. The ship which might have come to her aid passed her by, and when disaster fell upon her, only one hundred of her thousand men were left unwounded.

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Pepys, the shrewdest written by the hand of man. And if we have waited patiently for the task to be accomplished, we have not waited in vain.

Mr Harris's 'Life' has many merits. It is just and well written, the fruit of much careful research. The author has made excellent use of the papers preserved at Hinchingbrooke, and has added not a little to our knowledge of a period specially favoured by historians. But he has not permitted the life of his hero to be submerged in his "times," and Sandwich stands out in his pages a brave, honest, and sometimes maligned man. At last he is vindicated, and henceforth, to use Mr Harris's own phrase, "in a conclave of seamen he need no longer sit below the salt."

THE ENGLISH IN EGYPT, 1901 AND 1912.

SOME POINTS OF PROGRESS.

BY COLONEL SIR HENRY KNOLLYS, K.C.V.O.

"WE verily believe that were it ascertained the moon is inhabited, England would immediately proceed to annex it," was the sour denunciation against our action in Egypt, uttered not long ago by certain Germans less solicitous for the welfare of their own country than to contribute to the illwill of Germany against England. The astonishing feature of our success in the land of the Nile is that it has been attained in defiance of our original strenuous efforts to cast off this now brilliant factor of our Empire. Our successive Governments, whether duty-loving or party-loving, erstwhile tried might and main to get out of Egypt. In vain. No other civilised nation would face the invidious task demanded by civilisation; and now, in 1912, it cannot be questioned that under our reluctant rule the land of the Nile has been progressing with seven-league-boot strides, almost without a parallel either in old Egypt or new Europe. In 1901 an article appeared in 'Blackwood' entitled "Egypt: English Waxing and French Waning." I will endeavour to point out some further waxing on our part during the subsequent eleven years, and some further waning on the part of the

French element, which has recently acquiesced herein with the generous goodwill largely influenced by King Edward's conversion of traditional hostility into trusting cordiality.

To begin with details, trumpery-like straws as isolated details-significant-like straws indicating the drift of a current. In 1901 the condition of the streets of Cairo compared favourably, it is true, with the dead-dog and rotten-refuse prevalence of ten years previously. But in 1912, not only in the capital, but in such towns as Assiout, Minya, and Luxor, there is an excellence of cleanliness, both of sight and smell, amidst populous poverty, barely to be found in London notwithstanding the reckless squandering of the County Council. Formerly the water supply, thick and fetid with decaying organisms, was to be regarded rather as an eatable than as a drinkable substance. Now, the "Nile champagne," as the natives call it, though in summer it still kills swarms of babies, no longer annihilates them as completely as a hive of bees stifled with sulphur. Numerous slums have been swept away, together with some of the horrors of drainage, or rather of non-drainage. Even parts of the Mouski, so

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entrancingly suggestive of 'The Arabian Nights,' of Haroun-alRaschid and of Sindbad the Sailor, is in process of being turned topsy-turvy in the warfare against sickness, suffering, and death. Sanitation is rightly given precedence over the picturesque, even as the feeding of some additional millions of human beings, as a consequence of the Assouan Barrage, has rightly been given precedence over the discoloration of the Phylæ temple. In earlier days the hustling and jostling through 8 motley orowd, the importunities for baksheesh, the wiles of snakecharmers and conjurors, the yelling competition of the struggling donkey - boys, the solicitations of the native cheap-jacks, were all highly characteristic and amusing features of an Oriental city. They were not, however, conducive to orderliness, and in 1912 they were all restrained, not with the bullying of, say, a Berlin civic serjeant - major, but with the quiet and more effectual "off with you" of an Egyptian "Policeman A."

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Formerly, the clamorous chorus of baksheesh beggars was rather amusing to a newcomer; then it grew to be tiresome, and finally exasperating. "Please, which is the way -?"-baksheesh. "Thank you, ," for picking up a handkerchief-baksheesh. "Oh, what a pretty baby!" "Baksheesh," demanded the mother, "because I please you with pretty sight." I, indignantly: "Why, that very donkey is braying against you. What does he

say?" "He say he want baksheesh too." At last the evil becomes intolerable, and its degrading effects glaring.

So effectually have Lord Cromer's efforts to check the abominable baksheesh-begging succeeded, that should you in 1912 bestow half a piastre on some comical little native imp, he slyly watches for the city Cerberus ere Cerberus ere he laughingly bolts with his prey. Street traffic and street processions are no longer allowed to work haphazard: they are regulated as efficiently as in Piccadilly. At about 11 P.M. one evening I was present at a Mahomedan fair at Boulak-in old days the local Whitechapel. The gaudy Eastern booths were dazzling with lights; throngs were dense; the native police visible were few that they could be counted on the fingers, and apparently I and my companion were the sole English people present. Not a swear or a blow, or a fight or a yell. The crowd constituted an object-lesson to English suffragettes. During the daytime an English lady may wander through the streets unattended with perfect immunity.

the

80

On 14th February 1912 a sad cortége, in private carriages bearing no emblems of distinction, drove from the "Hyksos" dahabeah, whereon the Duke of Fife had died, through miles of streets to the railway terminus. The route was thickly lined, and the railway square was closely crowded with representatives of numerous Oriental terri

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Egyptians, Arabians, be well to speak a few sentences
of the three distinguished
Englishmen who, during the
period under consideration, have
swayed the destinies of Egypt
de facto, under the subterfuge
of Khedival rule de jure,-Lord
Cromer, Sir Eldon Gorst, and
Lord Kitchener.

and Nubians, "dwellers of
Pontus, Phrygia, and Pam-
phylia," strangely varied in
dress, feature, and form, mo-
tionless as statues, so silent
as to be solemn, yet withal
conveying an impression of
great pity for the three sor-
rowing ladies. Not a per-
emptory "Stand back"
"Make way" was necessary.
Just a few Anglo- Egyptian
constables responding to 8
wave-of-the-arm signal, and
under the directions of Harvey
Pasha and Yuzbashi Philip.

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The adult natives have, during the past ten years, become a little more independent and not a little more impudent, though they still hold "the word of a Frank" in reverential awe. Smack a native over the head-a practice to which Englishmen were, ten years ago, regrettably prone if you dare. The chances are he will successfully summon you for assault, for he knows that the sway of the kourbash has at last become extinct, and that he will receive the same justice as a European. Resident Englishmen are apt to declaim in wrath at this evenhandedness. Wroth at rightfulness! Would he advocate wrongfulness?

And will he not do well to attenuate some of the oppressing haughtiness, not to say savageness, on which a certain section of our countrymen still pride themselves when addressing natives.

The evidence I have been adducing thus far may, I repeat, be deemed superficial; but before going deeper, it will

Few competent judges would now dispute that Lord Cromer was the first to evolve definitely order out of chaos-chaos both financial and administrative. Did he not transform an almost desperate debt not only into solvency but into an annual handsome balance credit?-and that without juggling with figures, or, to quote the pungent expression of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, without "robbing hen-roosts.' Did he not compel the Egyptian rulers - rulers forsooth! - notwithstanding persistent opposition, to enter into an era of prosperity in their own country? Did he not substitute for chicane, corruption, and outrageous malpractices, straightforwardness, integrity, ness, integrity, and duty? Did he not bring the oppressed fellahin into a condition of ease and of comparative affluence, unknown since the twilight dawn of history? Did he not render the kourbash and the corvée of forced labour as completely a tradition of the past as that of "Simon Legree" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and in lieu establish civil discipline in Lower and semi-military discipline in Upper Egypt? Did he not inaugurate the splendid achievements of the Barrage, and the not less benevolent benefits of improved sanitation

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