Mr. Disraeli was nearly as bad as Mr. Gabriel. In
his most solemn manner he told the " snub-nosed Saxons," as he calls them, assembled at the banquet of Thursday, that the Pasha had "applied all the resources of modern science in the teeming and inexhaustible land of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies," and had even " laid the foundation of representative institutions." Only imagine a fellah with an opinion on monopolies, and the way the Viceroy would treat him ! How many years is it since Mr. Dis- raeli in a nobler mood said, in the House of Commons, "Represen- tative institutions are doubtless excellent things, but I cannot forget that my race has seen and survived the Pharaohs ?" Well, history has its revenges, and the descendants of the men who dragged the statue of the Sphinx to its place under the whip, honour the successor of the Pharaohs,—who executes public works very much as they did—by entertainments and laudation. Mr. Poynter should paint the banquet under "Israel in Egypt," and call both " The Irony of Providence."
