Mentone, Cairo and Corfu . le boats on the fairy-likepool, and in strolling up and down the marble colon-nades, unveiled (as Mehemet was the only man present),and in their richest attire. The marbles have growndim, the fountains are choked, the colonnades are dusty,and the lake has a melancholy air. But even in itsdecay Choubra presents to the man of fancy—a fewsuch men still exist—a picture of Oriental scenes whichhe has all his life imagined, perhaps, but whose actualtraces he no more expected to see with his own eyes in1890 than to behold the silken sails of Cleopatra furledamong Cooks stea
Mentone, Cairo and Corfu . le boats on the fairy-likepool, and in strolling up and down the marble colon-nades, unveiled (as Mehemet was the only man present),and in their richest attire. The marbles have growndim, the fountains are choked, the colonnades are dusty,and the lake has a melancholy air. But even in itsdecay Choubra presents to the man of fancy—a fewsuch men still exist—a picture of Oriental scenes whichhe has all his life imagined, perhaps, but whose actualtraces he no more expected to see with his own eyes in1890 than to behold the silken sails of Cleopatra furledamong Cooks steamers on the Nile. Mehemets lastyears were spent at Choubra, and here he died, in 1849,at the age of eighty - one. As he had forced fromTurkey a firman assigning the throne to his own fami-ly, he was succeeded by one of his sons. ISMAIL In 1863 (after the short reign of Ibrahim, five yearsof Abbas, and eight of Said), Ismail, Mehemets grand-son, ascended the throne. He had received his educa-tion in Paris. 3 2 03 S-J* O. 245 Much has been written about this man. The open-ing, in 1869, of the Suez Canal turned the eyes of theentire civilized world upon Egypt. The writers swoopeddown upon the ancient country in a flock, and thecanal, the land, and its ruler were described again andagain. The ruler was remarkable. Ismail was short(one speaks of him in the past tense, although he is notdead), with very broad shoulders; his hands were sin-gularly thick; his ears also were thick, and oddly placed ;his feet were small, and he always wore finically fineFrench shoes. There was nothing of the Arab in hisface, and little of the Turk. One of his eyelids had anatural droop, and vexed diplomatists have left it uponrecord that he had the power of causing the other todroop also, thus making it possible for him to studythe faces of his antagonists at his leisure, he, meanwhile,presenting to them in return a blind mask. The mask,however, was amiable; it was adorned almost con-stantly with a s
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