28 JANUARY 1899, Page 30

THE LATE NUBAR PASHA.

[TO THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIB,—It is to be hoped that accounts of the late Nubar Pasha will do justice to his genuine interest in humanity, apart from his official behaviour. Happening to be on a French steamer during one of his returns to duty, I found it interesting to observe the difference of his attitudes. To us English he was carefully cold, to the French party he was polite, even going so far as to join a card-party presided over by a very charming lady from Brussels. Also there was a French Count of the old, stately kind, and with him would the Pasha permit himself a rare promenade. We English were necessary to him in business, but this was his holiday, not yet finished. Those French were not allied to him politically, but were personally to his taste, and this was his holiday, not yet finished.

His own people, or the Levantines, or any one not Euro- pean. Ah, that was a very different thing So every day he made a tour of the steerage passengers, gossiping with them and jesting, to judge by the frequent little deferential laughs and the animated faces. They were a motley and rather un- savoury assemblage, who brought their own food and bedding, and slept anyhow on the bare decks, whatever the weather, men, women, babies.

"He make himself poppylar," said a dragoman. But surely this was a superficial view of the thing. He did make himself popular, but he also made one understand how he had come by his knowledge of human beings, which is agreed to have been extensive and peculiar, and to have counted much in making him the first-class man he was.— 'The Pines,' Lan gland Gardens, Hampstead, January 1Cth,